The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American indie[4][5] teen coming-of-age comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by John Hughes.

It stars Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy.

The film tells the story of five teenagers from different high school cliques who serve a Saturday detention overseen by their authoritarian vice principal.

[6] In 2016, The Breakfast Club was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

On Saturday, March 24, 1984, five students at Shermer High School in Shermer, Illinois, report for an all-day detention: socially awkward Brian Johnson, jock Andrew Clark, shy loner Allison Reynolds, popular girl Claire Standish, and rebellious delinquent John Bender.

They gather in the school library and meet with their vice principal Richard Vernon, who warns them not to talk or move from their seats and assigns each of them the task of writing a thousand-word essay describing "who you think you are."

Bender ignores the rules and spends his time antagonizing the others and defying Vernon, who gives him eight additional weekends of detention.

The students pass the time arguing, listening to music, and smoking marijuana, gradually opening up about their home lives and their reasons for being in detention: Despite their differences, the students realize they all face similar problems; Andrew and Allison bond over their complex relationships with their parents; Brian and Claire each feel anxiety over being a virgin.

The title was originally The Lunch Bunch, but a friend of John's from another school had a detention class called "The Breakfast Club", so he decided to go with that.

[19] He ultimately convinced the film's investors that due to the modest $1 million budget and its single-location shoot, he could greatly minimize their risk.

The same setting was used for interior scenes of Hughes's 1986 film Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which featured exterior shots from nearby Glenbrook North High School.

The appearance of the library at Maine North High, considered too small for use in the film, prompted the crew to build a virtually identical but larger set in the school's gymnasium.

[21] During a cast reunion in honor of the film's 25th anniversary, Ally Sheedy revealed that a director's cut existed; but Hughes's widow, who was also present, did not disclose any details concerning its whereabouts.

[16] In 2015, the first draft of the film's script was discovered in a Maine South High School cabinet as district employees were moving offices to a new building.

It explores the pressure put on teenagers to fit into their own realms of high school social constructs, as well as the lofty expectations of their parents, teachers, and other authority figures.

[31] In 2008, a "Flashback Edition" DVD was released with several special features, including an audio commentary with Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson.

The transfer was the same as the previous release but included new features such as fifty minutes of new, deleted and extended scenes, an Electronic Press Kit, new and archival interviews, a 1985 excerpt of the Today program, a new video essay and an episode of This American Life.

[37][38] Roger Ebert awarded three stars out of four and called the performances "wonderful", adding that the film was "more or less predictable" but "doesn't need earthshaking revelations; it's about kids who grow willing to talk to one another, and it has a surprisingly good ear for the way they speak.

It works especially well in The Breakfast Club because we keep waiting for the film to break out of its claustrophobic set and give us a typical teenage movie sex-or-violence scene.

"[40] Kathleen Carroll from the New York Daily News stated, "Hughes has a wonderful knack for communicating the feelings of teenagers, as well as an obvious rapport with his exceptional cast–who deserve top grades.

The website's critics consensus reads, "If The Breakfast Club's gestures towards authenticity are occasionally undercut by trendy flourishes, its blistering emotional honesty and talented troupe of young actors catapult it to the top of the teen comedy class.

Estevez could not attend because of other commitments, and Nelson appeared earlier in the show but left before the on-stage reunion, prompting Hall to joke that the two were "in Africa with Dave Chappelle".

At the 82nd Academy Awards (March 7, 2010), Sheedy, Hall, Ringwald, and Nelson all appeared in a tribute to John Hughes—who had died the prior year—along with other actors who had worked with him, including Jon Cryer from Pretty in Pink, Matthew Broderick from Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone.

In 2018, The New Yorker published an article written by Ringwald in which she critiqued Hughes's films "in the age of #MeToo", beginning with a discussion of how she explained to her ten-year-old daughter what happened in the scene when her character seems to be sexually assaulted under a desk.

[57] The essay provoked some to claim that Ringwald was criticising the director who made her into a film star, but she was defended by Jenny Han for a "tender, fair-minded piece".

The song "Don't You (Forget About Me)", performed by Scottish rock band Simple Minds, was released as a single on February 23, 1985, in the United States and reached No.

[65] In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the soundtrack three out of five stars and wrote that, apart from Simple Minds' "undisputed masterpiece", the album is largely "disposable" and marred by "'80s artifacts" and "forgettable instrumentals".