The Breakfast Club at 40: A Timeless Reflection

How a film about teenagers still speaks to the hearts of adults navigating life’s ups and downs

“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it, that’s all.”

The Breakfast Club

Tonight, something lovely happened.

I sat with a dear friend and my eldest daughter and son in Yarn, the beautiful cultural arts space in Ballycastle, to watch the 40th anniversary screening of The Breakfast Club. A glass of wine in hand, surrounded by the gentle buzz of a mixed-age crowd, I felt a rare and profound kind of connection. Not just to them, but to myself, across time.

I first saw The Breakfast Club as a teenager, and I’ve returned to it at every stage of life since. Each time, it speaks to me in a new way, and yet somehow it always feels like home. I think I know every line, not just by memory, but by something deeper, more instinctive. This film has woven itself into the fabric of my inner world.

There are very few pieces of art that remain beloved throughout every stage of life. But for me, this is one of them. Maybe the one.

What makes it so special? I’ve thought about that a lot.

John Hughes had an extraordinary ability, perhaps a genius, for writing young people in a way that felt fully real. Not idealised, or ridiculed. Not flattened into one-note archetypes. Each of the five students in The Breakfast Club, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal, could have easily become clichés. But they’re not.

Even when they’re being infuriating, you still see their vulnerability, their wounds, their humanity. You’re not watching characters. You’re inhabiting them. You’re remembering what it was like to be them. Or maybe you’re realising you still are them, in some way.

It’s incredibly rare for a film to honour teenage experience with such empathy and nuance. It’s not sentimental, and it’s never patronising. It’s just honest. Painfully, beautifully honest. And perhaps that’s why it still holds such power four decades on.

One of the things I felt watching The Breakfast Club this time, perhaps it’s a stage-of-life thing, is how my perception of the assistant Principal Mr Vernon has changed. When I first saw the film as a teenager, I hated him. He was the villain, the authority figure, the one who just didn’t get it. But now, I watch him and I feel something closer to sadness. You can see the bitterness in him, the resentment. I think that he’s looking at those kids, so full of life and potential, and all he sees is the gap between who he once thought he’d be and who he has become. Somewhere along the way, he seems to have lost his sense of purpose, and instead of facing that, he lashes out at the students, resentful that they still have their lives ahead of them.

And then there’s the janitor Carl, supposedly “beneath” Mr Vernon in the school hierarchy, but somehow far more grounded, far more content. He sees through Mr. Vernon completely. He understands the kids better too. The students respect him, joke with him, let him in in ways they never would with their teacher. There’s a quiet dignity in Carl, a reminder that status doesn’t equal wisdom, and that peace with yourself matters more than the title on your door.

There’s a bittersweet joy in watching this film now. It’s part of the tapestry of my growing up, and holds a special place in my heart. I know the characters so well they almost feel like old friends. I sometimes find myself wishing we could see where those characters ended up, what their lives look like now, who they became in adulthood. They’d be in their 50s by now. But the truth is, only John Hughes could have told that story in a way that felt real. Only he could have written their grown-up selves with the same emotional honesty, depth, and heart that he gave them as teenagers. And with him gone, that unwritten story goes with him, which makes the original feel all the more precious.

Maybe that’s part of the sadness I feel when I watch it now, knowing that the man who created it is no longer with us, having died suddenly and tragically in 2009. But what a legacy he left behind. This film is a time capsule. It captures something so precious: a kind of innocence we had in the 1980s, before the world shifted. Before smartphones, before social media, before attention became so fragmented and commodified. Watching The Breakfast Club feels like looking back at something rare and beautiful, a piece of cultural history that I’m so deeply grateful to have grown up with.

There were some lovely people at the screening tonight, a quiet, warm, communal feeling in the room. Some of the younger folk thought the film was “cute,” but “maybe a little overrated.” And you know what? Fair enough. Maybe from where they’re standing now, it is.

But give it time, I wanted to say. Come back to it after life has had its way with you, and you have experienced some of the slings and arrows of adult life, and you’ll see. You’ll feel what this film is really doing.

Because The Breakfast Club doesn’t just speak to teenagers. It speaks to the teenager who still lives inside us. The one who never quite felt seen. The one who still longs, sometimes quietly, to be understood.

And tonight, sitting there in that beautiful space surrounded by friends and family, I realised again just how deeply grateful I am, not only for this film, but for being here to watch it once more. To laugh at the same lines. To feel the same ache. To know that something created all those years ago still lives and still matters.

Some things really do stand the test of time.