STUDIO: Universal | DIRECTOR: John Hughes | CAST: Molly Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Anthony Michael Hall
RELEASE DATE: 8/3/2010 | PRICE: Blu-ray$26.98
BONUSES: documentary, featurette, commentary, BD-Live
SPECS: R | 97 min. | Drama/Comedy | 1.85:1 | DTS-HD audio | English, Spanish, French subtitlesRATINGS (out of 5 dishes): Movie
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Seminal 1980s teen movie The Breakfast Club debuted on Blu-ray as a 25th Anniversary Edition, but Univeral Studios didn’t exactly throw the movie a big birthday bash with this release.
Written and directed by John Hughes (Sixteen Candles), The Breakfast Club features all the brat packers ( Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson and Anthony Michael Hall) playing sterotypical teen types in high school: the brain, the jock, the beauty queen, the outlaw and the goth. Stuck together for a Saturday detention, the teens learn about each other and themselves.
It’s a simple story, but the brilliance of the movie is in the script and the acting. Hughes is a genius (and I mean that in the proper way, not the Hollywood way) at developing teen characters that ring true. The Breakfast Club might seem as though it’s filled with stereotypes, but under Hughes’ direction, the characters are more multi-dimensional. The beauty queen (Ringwald) has insecurities, for example. This allows viewers to see a bit of themselves in every character and fall in love with the movie.
As such, The Breakfast Club still stands up today. But on high-definition, the transfer isn’t what viewers have come to expect in video quality. Not to say that it’s not watchable; it is, it just has more grain than we’re used to. It’s not up to the high standard of newer titles, even catalog titles such as Road to Perdition, which Universal is releasing on Blu-ray the same day.
The Breakfast Club‘s high-definition sound is good, though, with Simple Minds’ “Don’t You” perfectly danceable.
This isn’t the first high-definition release for The Breakfast Club, however. The movie was issued on HD DVD before that format lost the high-def war. But the HD DVD version had no special features, and the new Blu-ray comes loaded.
The downside is, all the special features have been released before on an earlier DVD editions.
The best supplement is the retrospective documentary Sincerely Yours, in which Sheedy, Nelson, Hall and others remember the movie’s production and talk about the film’s lasting appeal. It’s an interesting feature with plenty of behind-the-scenes stories. And although it might seem as though it was made for the film’s 25th birthday, it was on the Flashback Edition DVD released in 2008.
The Blu-ray also includes a shorter featurette on the definition of “brat pack” and a commentary with Nelson and Hall.
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Buy or Rent The Breakfast Club 25th Anniversary
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