In Case You Missed It #7: The Breakfast Club: Has it Aged Well?

 In "The Breakfast Club", five teenagers with wildly different personalities and subcultures are sent to detention for a variety of different reasons. Ultimately they learn to respect each other in this environment while also realizing they are very similar in a lot of different ways. 


The Breakfast Club is an older movie (circa 1985) and maintains an impressive air of dialogue and solid filmmaking even to this day. While obviously not socially perfect (Bender is admittedly a bit sexist, at least at the beginning) the film manages to balance different subcultures while acknowledging their similarities in many smart ways through dialogue and music. 


The soundtrack remains iconic today (who could forget about me (or the song "Don't you forget about me") and the dialogue is similarly up-to-par. The writing manages to humanize the teenage characters while also being funny, revealing, and above-all naturalistic (we believe what they say like we believe what friends and family members say, circumstantially). 


The film is a little sexist (as I mentioned earlier) and some of the gross-out humor hasn't aged well (some people might object to teenagers smoking marijuana or swearing at all). However, I do not believe the vulgarity in any way takes away from the seismic impact it did (and should) have. 


If you're into socially relevant movies from the 1980s that humanize teenagers, then this might well be your pick. If you're turned off by vulgarity in language, I understand, but I believe enough people can enjoy this to move past its more unsavory elements. 


Listen to my podcast on The Breakfast Club at patreon.com/posts/40776680 


Thank you and goodbye. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HOW I AM MORE PRODUCTIVE THAN YOU THINK

If you don’t already read this blog (or even know if I exist) you probably don’t believe me: bear with me anyway, as there’s a lesson in disguise.   I’ve had a very productive couple weeks, some days harder than others. I had a pretty lax schedule generally before though; it went something like this: Wake up and drink coffee/eat breakfast Watch videos, movies, listen to podcasts all day every day (MAYBE read a book or article) MAYBE DoorDash deliver or Instacart shop Go to bed Now even though I maintain I’ve been more productive these past couple weeks, I would like to point out my schedule has not changed that much.  Here’s how it goes: Wake up and drink coffee Work on podcast or upcoming videos (schedule changes depending on video) Go for a run (depends on day and time); run or not either way I take a shower, basic hygiene DoorDash or Instacart (again, depends on the day and time) Get writing done (books, screenplays, this blog, I have a lot to write) Watch video
Read more

Production Journal for 'Roomies' Production (January-July 2023)

Introduction My name is Logan Tyler Smith. Sometime in 2019, when I was getting really into filmmaking (specifically the works of Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino, as most film buffs get into), I came up with a title: Roomies. I hadn't really had a full idea at this point, but I knew it would be a good title for a 90s-early 2000 style indie film.  That is, I didn't have a full idea until August 2022.  I fleshed out the idea into a well-formed outline and knew that if I wanted to finally make a feature-length film, this outline would be the way to do it.  At this point in my career, I had only made short films, but I decided it was time to finally make my feature length directorial debut. And after putting together a well-done script, I got to working on preproduction.  Obviously, as you're going to see in the following production journal, the idea evolved and went through some evolution over the course of filming it. Preproduction was mostly where I chose my actors, Bryan
Read more

Why I'm Taking a Break from LoganLand Rants

WHY I’M TAKING A BREAK FROM LOGANLAND RANTS by Logan Tyler Smith Hey guys. If you’ve been a longtime viewer of my YouTube channel, you probably know that for the past two or so years (since 2019), I’ve had a movie-based podcast titled LoganLand Rants.  The basic concept of the podcast is that I provide my unfiltered opinions on movies, the good the bad and in-between of my perspective on a given cinematic work. Also you may have noticed I haven’t uploaded in about fa month since posting the last podcast video on the film 21 Jump Street.  And that’s pretty much where I’m comfortable leaving it for now. Part of this blog will be my reasons why I’m taking a long hiatus from LoganLand Rants.  I’m spending my time filmmaking/writing.  I’m sure my friends and family watching this video know this, but for those of you who don’t know, in high school I wanted to be a fantasy novelist. While that dream of fantasy writing has faded a little bit, the creative urge simply hasn’t gone away
Read more