{"id":562021,"date":"2025-11-10T19:30:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T19:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562021\/"},"modified":"2025-11-10T19:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T19:30:22","slug":"the-breakfast-club-4k-uhd-blu-ray-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562021\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Breakfast Club’ 4K UHD Blu-ray Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheJohn Hughes\u2019s Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off<\/a> is a great example of a film where the reputed hero is actually the villain. Though it\u2019s Hughes\u2019s finest moment as a writer and director, the film still takes for granted its upper-middle-class teen hero\u2019s ownership of everyone and everything around him. Beneath the film\u2019s stylistic swipes from the French New Wave is the very personification of American entitlement. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a bridge too far to suggest that Hughes\u2019s earlier smash, The Breakfast Club, is the inverse of Ferris Bueller\u2019s Day Off, or to call it a film wherein the supposed villain actually turns out to be the hero. Paul Gleason\u2019s autocratic Assistant Principal Vernon lords over the film\u2019s quintet of niche-filling teenage protagonists, who are spending Saturday serving detention, with all the subtlety of Strother Martin playing Cool Hand Luke<\/a>\u2019s sneering prison warden. And yet, that he assigns the jock, the prom queen, the nerd, the bully, and the space cadet to write a thousand words about who they believe they are suggests he\u2019s as concerned for the inner turmoil of the adolescent set as the film\u2019s club members are themselves.<\/p>\n

The quintessential Brat Pack vehicle, hampered by Hughes\u2019s willingness to pigeonhole his protagonists in the same way as they accuse Vernon of doing, The Breakfast Club is hopelessly tethered to its era in ways that another blockbuster from 1985, Back to the Future<\/a>, isn\u2019t. And that film\u2019s entire subtext mirrors the \u201980s against the similarly regressive \u201950s. Robert Zemeckis\u2019s jaunty contraption arguably offers more cross-generational insight at any given moment than every incident of Vernon and Judd Nelson\u2019s Bender sparring combined.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just the totally to-the-max duds or Hughes\u2019s fixation on stacking his soundtrack with college-radio needle-drop cues. Rather, the film\u2019s characters operate within or, in unfortunate cases like Anthony Michael Hall\u2019s Brian, fight in vain against a disagreeably Reagan-era social context that finds young suburban Americans unsure about any number of things about themselves\u2014except that their struggles are truly the only thing in the world that matters.<\/p>\n

And, in true Reagan-esque fashion, the film gets away with it. Rather than writing essays, Bender, Brian, Andy (Emilio Estevez), Claire (Molly Ringwald), and, when she\u2019s not tossing lunch meat around the room, Allison (Ally Sheedy) spend their detention snarling in the face of authority, breaking in and out of the school library (and one closet), smoking pot, letting their hair down, indulging in leftfield dance montages, and crying together. Hughes intended for this feature-length bonding session to break down whatever bullshit high-school barriers his characters perceived to be keeping them in their societal silos, which might have been an admirable goal if he managed to take it to its logical endpoint and if the elimination of said silos also led to the eradication of their accompanying power dynamics.<\/p>\n

But even though The Breakfast Club abounds in soul-bearing moments throughout, it\u2019s only after the popular Claire gives Allison, the unpolished diamond, a mall makeover that Andy, the big man on campus, realizes that she\u2019s dateable. Then, everyone gangs up on Brian, the meek one, to write their \u201ccollective\u201d essay, which he obliges while everyone else is having their bittersweet and sorrowful partings in the outside world, raising a triumphant fist to the accompaniment of Simple Minds\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t You (Forget About Me)\u201d while everyone forgets about the geek they conned into doing their homework for them.<\/p>\n

Image\/Sound<\/p>\n

John Hughes\u2019s sophomore effort was no high-budget affair, and its gauzy 1980s pallor endures throughout, to the extent that fans would care. While there\u2019s a friendly, filmic look to the new 4K transfer, it\u2019s also alluringly soft, even downright Love\u2019s Baby Soft. The cerulean beams of the school library\u2019s neon-lit second floor balconies provide an appealing contrast to the room\u2019s maple paneling and redhead Molly Ringwald\u2019s clashing pinks. The sound options are twofold: the original (and serviceable) monaural soundtrack and the 5.1 remix, which doesn\u2019t really offer much in the way of difference aside from blowing out those accursed music cues.<\/p>\n

Extras<\/p>\n

The audio commentary from Anthony Michael Hall and Judd Nelson is ported over from an earlier Universal release, and it\u2019s nice enough, though one wishes Criterion would\u2019ve tried to get Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, and Ally Sheedy into a room for a counterpoint. The other retread is the nearly hour-long documentary retrospective \u201cSincerely Yours,\u201d which includes not only cast and crew members, but jeremiads from Hughes contemporaries like Amy Heckerling.<\/p>\n

The remainder of the extras have been ported over from Criterion\u2019s 2018 Blu-ray release. Masochists can catch an extra hour or so of the film via the disc\u2019s collection of deleted and extended scenes. And those still lighting a candle for the departed Hughes will be happy to bask in a 1985 AFI seminar clip with the writer-director, as well as a very Chicago-centric 1999 radio interview, and Judd Nelson\u2019s recitations from Hughes\u2019s production journal for the film. Finally, a brave essay by David Kamp is included in the disc\u2019s accompanying booklet.<\/p>\n

Overall<\/p>\n

Forty years young, John Hughes\u2019s sophomore effort gets a lovely new restoration, but the recycled extras on this release may leave fans of the film feeling as if they\u2019re stuck in detention.<\/p>\n

Score:\u00a0<\/strong>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0Cast:<\/strong> Emilio Estevez, Paul Gleason, Anthony Michael Hall, John Kapelos, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Perry Crawford, Mary Christian, Ron Dean, Tim Gamble, Fran Gargano, Mercedes Hall \u00a0Director:<\/strong> John Hughes \u00a0Screenwriter:<\/strong> John Hughes \u00a0Distributor:<\/strong> The Criterion Collection \u00a0Running Time:<\/strong> 97 min \u00a0Rating:<\/strong> R \u00a0Year:<\/strong> 1985 \u00a0Release Date:<\/strong> November 4, 2025 \u00a0Buy:<\/strong> Video<\/a>
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