Here Comes Peter Cottontail: Review and Commentary

How do you do.

    Here Comes Peter Cottontail gets its title from a song of the same name and is based on the story "The Easter Bunny Who Slept." It is a Raskin / Bass production with stop motion animation to tell the story of Peter Cottontail, an Easter bunny from April Valley, who is destined to become Chief Easter Bunny.

   The film is narrated by Seymour S. Sassafras, proprietor of the Seymour S. Sassafras and Company, voiced by Danny Kaye. Mr. Sassafras is treated as being like the mailman in Santa Claus is Coming to Town, only funnier, and ultimately more involved. After introducing himself and showing off his colorful talents, he gives a tour of April Valley and tells us what the film is about. It's like the old chorus in a play who introduces the story before we see the action (like in A Mid-Summer Night's Dream where the Rude Machanics' play is summarized by a speaker before the program starts). He makes it easy for the little ones: the film's hero is Peter Cottontail "who almost lost the job" to the wicked January Q. Irontail, who is voiced by Vincent Price. 

   Sassafras starts the story by saying Colonel Wellington B. Bunny (also voiced by Kaye) has decided to retire and appoint a new successor. He speaks highly of Peter but an aide to his tells us a few things of Peter: "he is boastful, he has no sense of responsibility, and sometimes, sometimes he fibs!" This is demonstrated in his first scene where Peter tells a fib (lie) and his left ear drooples (a trumpet in the orchestra orchestrates the move). Colonel Bunny is apparently not a military officer from his appearances. My guess is that among Easter Bunnies, there is no need of an army as they don't fight wars. So, Colonel is just an honorary title, just as it is done in the South. Yet, he does reprimand Peter on his fibbing and admonishes him in a song called "The Easter Bunny Never Sleeps".

    For some reason, the Colonel's aid is also in an interview with Irontail. Irontail says he doesn't want Peter to become Chief Easter Bunny. In fact, he hates the whole Easter Season, just as the Grinch once hated Christmas, only he has a reason. In the past, Irontail once had a fluffy tail just like everyone else until a child rollerskated over it. This action, which would warrant the PETA to fine the child's parents for animal abuse, results in him losing his real tail and has instead an artificial one made of iron (hence his name) that twitches up and down with a clank when shown (yet is often silent). In a sense, Irontail is like Captain Hook, a character who is robbed of the thing that made him whole and has to use a fake replacement and this becomes a source of his wickedness. Irontail says he now despises children and is determined to have Easter cancelled forever. Most of the villains in movies of the Raskin / Bass production tend to be cartoonish, often evil for no reason at all (a mayor who hates children and toys), or just mean because of some misfortune (living alone in a palace full of machines) or need to grow up and get over it (Miser brothers). Irontail is more sympathetic because of the injury.

    The first thing Irontail does is to interrupt the Colonel rehearsing the appointing of Peter as Chief Easter Bunny. Irontail pulls out the April Valley Constitution with all the smug of a lawyer, which proves that the Colonel cannot just appoint anyone as Chief Easter Bunny if he wants to. Of course, Irontail is not satisfied at knowing he has the law on his side. He challenges Peter to a contest on "who delivers the most eggs on Easter". Peter takes up the challenge, though Colonel Bunny is not too happy about it. Yet, he gives his word and the contest is on. 

   As one would expect, Irontail cheats in this contest by sabotaging Peter's alarm clock. To make matters worse, Peter, we are told, stayed up late in a party before going to bed. Of course, Irontail is shown being able to give away only one egg and because Peter overslept, that one egg made the difference. Peter had eggs ready and could have given more than Irontail, but he overslept and thus that one egg beat him. Irontail then sings a reprise he now calls "The Easter Bunny Always Sleeps", which now called for bending of tulips, rotting of jellybeans, butchering of hens, eggs being given ugly colors, chocolate bunnies and chicks replaced by tarantulas and octopuses, and Easter goulashes instead of bonnets.

    Having failed everyone, the best Peter can do is go into exile. But, the story doesn't end there. No, he runs into Sassafras who gives him a time machine called "Yestermorrow mobile" (Willy Wonka called and said he wants his puns back). It comes with an unusual pilot: a French caterpillar named Antoine (once again, Kaye). The machine has a device to take them back to Easter, but Irontail sends a spider to sabotage the gadgets (if it were made today, he would have sent a worm into its computer) and thus it lands in Mother's Day. From this, Here Comes Peter Cottontail goes on a journey across the holidays of the year instead of just Easter, leading me to believe this was intended to be a swan song of the holiday themed movies.

   The plot of the journey features many things Americans see in holidays. The first stop in Mother's Day has a boy and a girl having fun with their mom, Independence Day has boys watching fire works, Halloween has ghouls and witches, and Christmas has Santa Claus (voiced by Raskin / Bass favorite, Paul Frees). Same is with lesser holidays, like Thanksgiving having a banquet, Valentine's with romance, and Irishism in St. Patrick's, while Peter dresses up in costumes to match the themes of them all (he puts on diapers for New Years and a wig for George Washington's Birthday). Not all of the holidays are mentioned or seen in the special. The machine has a button for Arbor Day but we don't get to see it, nor is Father's Day visited (I'd like for feminists who take pop shots at Mothers' Day to note how Fathers' Day is considered less important to most compared to Mother's Day) as well as Columbus Day, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, Labor Day, or Hanukkah. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day wasn't around at the time, which is why he doesn't visit it either (though one wonders how would Peter dress up on that date without appearing racist). One thing to note is what the special doesn't show.

    Except for Mothers' Day, the real meaning of the holidays is not dwelt upon. Independence Day is more than just fire works and flag waving, Halloween is more than just ghosts, Christmas is not about Santa Claus, and St. Patrick's day is not just Ireland. Above all, Easter is not really about the bunny, the chick, or the egg. Easter and Christmas are actually about Jesus Christ: with Christmas centering on His birth and Easter on His Resurrection (with death happening during Passion Week), thus the two holidays give us the beginning and end of His life on earth. Both holidays are on older holidays: Christmas over Saturnalia and Easter over Passover, respectively, and have incorporated elements of other holidays into them. Easter was intended to celebrate Jesus' resurrection after Passion Week, which was where the Jewish Feast of the Passover happened, yet the Easter Bunny and the eggs are not of Judeo-Christian origin. The Easter Bunny is a Northern European concept of an intelligent hare (the renaming of him as a bunny is an American adaptation) who visits children with gifts. In short, he's Santa Claus in form of a hare and moved into the Spring. Like Santa, the Easter Bunny, or Osterhase, is said to give good treats to good children and punishing bad children (he was to judge children on Eastertide, after all). Not everyone uses the rabbit for egg giving as they have a wizard for that in Sweden, where girls can dress up as witches on Easter!

    Most have interpreted the image with Christianity, however, arguing that the bunny, being able to not lose its virginity in reproduction make it associated with the Virgin Mary, making the baskets be the manger that Christ was laid in, and the egg is Christ. This could be supported as the egg shell of a chicken egg (the preferred egg of Easter) is white, for the purity of Christ, the hardness of the shell for the strength of His love for us, the breaking of it forms lines like the stripes of the scourge while the peeling away the shell can be the opening of the tomb. Because it use to be a practice to not eat eggs during Lent, they would be hard boiled so they could last longer, as this was long before refrigerators were invented. Coloring the eggs is a German tradition, which used red for the Blood of Christ, however some places used green for the foliage of Spring grass. While the egg giving was done in Eastern Europe (and, coincidentally, Easter and East share the same root word, from the Germanic "Oster" which is said to come from the goddess Ostara, who is the Anglo-Saxon variant of Dawn and had a festival of her own in April), the egg is seen to have been traditional as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia.
   Here Comes Peter Cottontail excludes the Christian traditions of Easter as well as the purpose behind the images of it for three reasons: one it's a secular special which explains the lack of a mention of Christ in April Valley. There is not even a church in April Valley, which can either mean the Easter Bunnies don't have a religion or April Valley is suppose to be Earthly paradise as described in the Book of Revelations (the latter is questionable due to the presence of an evil bunny). Even though most religions can take a secular story and translate it to their faiths, the lack of crosses (except for what looks like a chocolate cross carved by one of the chocolate candy carvers) and churches or the meaning removes all purpose of the Easter Bunny's job. Two, the special wasn't produced to promote anything except the commercial aspects of Easter. In a sense, Here Comes Peter Cottontail, like Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus Is Coming to Town, is a commercial for the card and candy companies, and despite it being an Easter special it does the same in the other holidays. Most people don't see the connection but secularism and commercialism walk hand in hand in popular conception of holidays. If it's about the bunny and the basket of eggs, the sales are good while, apparently, "He Is Risen" doesn't sale anything (though candy companies have compensated that with chocolate crosses). The third and most obvious reason is because the special is supposedly geared to children. Yeah, the children are the ones most likely to respond to talking rabbits. Children are reared to treat the Easter Bunny as they do with the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, an invisible entity who gives them treats that they believe is real until they grow up and become bitter adults who believe they are being lied to. Despite any interpretations that are listed before, the usage of the Easter Bunny detracts the real meaning of Easter.
    We celebrate Easter for the Resurrection of Christ, which conquered death and has allowed us life. He is the way to Heaven and not the bunny. There was once a time this was spoon fed to Christian children, but in recent years we have the notion that children won't grasp the concept or will be traumatized at the fact that the greatest hero of all time had to be killed for our sins, that all has to be shielded from children and replaced by a fluffy image of the Easter Bunny and the egg basket. The last can understood because growing up I found Passion of the Lord section of Holy Week to be unbearable and longed to be in Easter all ready. Now that I am grown up, I understand now the importance of its inclusion, especially since Christians, especially Catholics, don't merely celebrate the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of Christ on Easter. We do it all the time in the Mass when we take communion, as say say "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again" or "When we eat this bread and drink this cup we proclaim your death, O Lord, until you come again."

   Even though it's secular, a few Christian themes are present in the special. Peter is named after Simon Peter, the head and spokesman of the disciples, and he embodies the concept of Everyman. He has his flaws in his pride and his habit of lying. His pride makes his undoing in the early part of the movie as he gets over cocky and celebrates a party instead of sleeping. Peter is humbled by his failure and goes through the special to deliver his eggs. However, his constant fibbing keeps getting in the way. Thus the theme of being honest as well as humble is present.
   While the meaning of Easter is excluded from the special, there is a slight reference to it that is easy to miss. During the Christmas sequence, Peter accidentally leaves Antoine behind. This happens while he picks up a bonnet who is left in a Christmas store. Since Peter has no money, he barters the eggs, but since Irontail was stealing them, he left nothing behind but his Santa suit and Antoine (symbolic of the disciples forsaking Jesus at the Garden as well as His death on the cross) yet the bonnet is saved (like we were from Satan's power). Off screen, Antoine wraps himself up in cocoon (symbolic of the tomb) and wakens as a butterfly (the Resurrection). The process of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly seems ordinary but it's the one action in the whole special that actually tells children what Easter is about, without getting into the theological side or the trauma of the crucifixion (still wish the special actually mentioned the meaning, anyway). Love and forgiveness is even mentioned in the Valentine's sequence where Peter meets a girl bunny who doesn't blast him for his oversleeping.
   Faith, Hope, and Love, the Fruits of the Holy Spirit, are also a theme in Here Comes Peter Cottontail. Peter has faith in himself, mostly, and it fails frequently. When he puts faith in the help of others (Sassafras' time machine, Antoine's skills, and the Bonnie's guide), even if it is not a faith in a higher power. Love in this is not romantic love, even if a bunny romance is suggested in the Valentine's sequence. It's Peter trading an eggs to get a bonnet out of a store so she can feel appreciated. Hope is most obvious of all.

    So, during this, Peter improves as he goes through the holidays. Irontail goes through life and limb to destroy the eggs, yet in Valentine's day he decides to improvise and turn the eggs green. At first it works, as green eggs aren't liked in Valentine's Day or George Washington's Birthday, yet when St. Patrick's Day comes, Peter wins through. One wonders if by turning the eggs green that Irontail shot himself in the foot (there are plenty of people who like green eggs, unless Sam I Am is offering them with ham). So, because Peter gives away the eggs on St. Patrick's Day, he wins the right to be Chief Easter Bunny and Irontail is reduced to janitor. As Peter hops away, another chorus of "Here Comes Peter Cottontail" is sung with the entire cast joining in and wishing the viewer "Happy Easter Day."
   Here Comes Peter Cottontail maybe a fifty one minute holiday commercial for candy and card companies as it ignores the meaning of Easter, and the holidays included in the special, it does have some good morals (though one wonders if the ghouls and the store clerk felt about not getting their eggs) and it's enjoyable to watch.

The Breakfast Club: Review and Commentary

How do you do.

   With the thirtieth anniversary of the release of The Breakfast Club being nigh, I decided to make one for it. 

   The premise of The Breakfast Club is five teenagers, from different cliques in high school, are sent to detention one Saturday and they spend the day getting to know each other. Throw in some angst and a few anti-authoritarian sentiments into the mix and mix them in with thought provoking challenges to perceptions and first impression, and that is what The Breakfast Club is all about. The movie stars a pretty Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall as two of the teenagers. 

   The teenager part is a misnamer as Hollywood tends to cast young adults as teenagers, often twenty or twenty-two year olds, sometimes as old thirty (the oldest actor I have seen to play a teenager is the woman playing Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter, at 37). Ringwald and Hall were the only teenage actors on the cast list, according Story Notes of the film on AMC. They were 16 when the movie was being filmed. Emilio Estevez and Ally Sheedy were both 22 at the time while Judd Nelson was 25. The characters they play match the age: it's easier to have an adult play a jock and the character Nelson played required an older actor. Rounding out the cast is Paul Gleeson as the principal, Mr. Vernon, and John Kapelos as Janitor Carl, the only adult characters who are not extras. 

   Since the plot is so easy to describe in a few sentences, there is hardly a reason to go through it scene by scene. Instead, let's look at the movie in the themes and the characters. We are introduced to the characters as stereotypical teenagers summed up in the film as "a brain, an athlete, a basket-case, a princess, and a criminal."

  The brain is shown to be Brian Johnson, played by Anthony Michael Hall. Brian does away with some of the nerdish cliches: the glasses, the bad teeth, the creepy smirk, etc. Instead, Brian is thin, tall, and bookish. He is also shown to be a perfectionism, not really use to failure, though he is not really confrontational. The athlete is Andrew Carke, played by Emilio Estevez, shown to be a wrestler with an attitude. The basket-case is Allison Reynolds, played by Ally Sheedy, a shy and unpredictable girl. The princess is Claire Standish, played by Molly Ringwald, who has all the traits of a rich girl sort as well as a brat. Finally there's John Bender, the criminal, played by Judd Nelson, who looks like a bigger version of Shawn Hunter yet twice as mean. 

   This thing plays out when they enter. Bender clowns around and talks sarcastically when Vernon is handing out papers, then he harasses the others. Allison withdraws from the group for most of the movie while Brian tries to focus on his paper, while annoying the others with a few facts. Claire and Andy are implied to be in a relationship, another popular trait among jocks and popular girls. The reason for this is that Andy asks Claire if she's grounded at one point. Later, he tells Bender "you don't talk to her, you don't look at her, and you don't even think about her!" The entire line and the way he says it are exactly what a boyfriend would say. On Andy, he is the only one of the teenagers to actually stand up to Bender, be it telling him to lay off of Brian and Claire or pulling a wrestling move on Bender. When they get into a face off, Andy has Bender down and in a lock in a few seconds, which it turns out Bender wasn't even resisting because he would have killed him. "It's real simple," he says. "I kill you and you f**king parents would sue me and it'd be a big mess and I don't even care enough about you to bother." He even pulls out a knife and stabs a chair to show he means business. 

    Of course, Bender uses the bad boy image and his tough approach to hide something, or it seems. Seeing how Bender likes to lie on a few things it's very hard to tell when he's lying and when he's honest. The thing he is hiding is brought up when he makes impressions of what goes on in houses (which is the favorite moment of mine). When asked to do his, he finds it easy, and then demonstrates a scene of verbal and physical abuse in his house. Apparently, his father goes in and calls him names, his mother adds in (though one can't help but think she is secretly insulting her husband) and his father then goes abusive on her too. Then he shows a cigar sized burn on his arm he got for "spilling paint in the garage." Of course, Bender doesn't invite any sympathy. All he does is knock things over and insult people. The trauma of it is more than Bender having an uncaring attitude of others but cowardliness. The main example of this comes when Vernon pulls him away to the closet and challenges him to a fight and offers his chin for the first punch. Bender doesn't take it and Vernon proves what he suspects by faking a punch. 

    The dynamics between Vernon and Bender make up the conflict of the movie. In fact, it's the main outlet to the battle of the ages. The age gap has become a trope in Hollywood, practically a byproduct of the Sixties, though some cases of it can be found before then. However, since the Sixties, this has gone up a notch where we actually see full blown arguments and fights between young and old. Much of it is to show some hidden strains of ageism to some while promoting ageism in others (in this case, we are encouraged to side with the teenagers). The Breakfast Club, like most of the teen movies of the Eighties is anti-authority when it comes to age gap. The adults, on screen and off, are shown as the figures of authority. The film shows them all as tyrants who expect more from the teenagers while limiting their abilities to move. They are shown to have set up a horrible world and a set of rules to follow while in that horrible world, and when they get out of line with those rules, or don't live up to those rules, they are punished in unfair matters, which the school detention is shown to represent.

   As an example of how Vernon is in the movie, the script has his first lines described as "with such disrespect it makes you wonder how he ever got the job."As children, we are taught to respect our elders, something common in societies (or at least it ought to). Critics of this notion consider respect for elders to be ageist, implying they get respect simply for being old. Ageism aside, respect is something that is to go both ways, though most people tend to be, also, that respect is earned, not given. Most societies only do this with younger people, yet Western countries have recently decided that the respect being earned, not given, can also go both ways. The philosophy in today's society is that if one gives disrespect than he can only get disrespect in return. It's an "eye for an eye" approach, at most. What the teenagers in the film do, and what Vernon does to them, goes against what Paul said when he said "Treat everyone with respect." Paul wrote the passage in a time when respect was given to higher ups, so the implications of the line meant kings should respect slaves as well. Clearly, Vernon doesn't heed Paul's message, thus the movie justifies it. Even when one of the teens calls for respect of Vernon, it's veiled insult. From the opening scene of Brian with his mom and Andy and Bender's stories of their dads, we see that there is little respect at home either. Claire has the worst as she speaks of the break down in her parents' marriage as each parent use her as a tool in their petty squabble, rather than keeping it to themselves as adults are expected to do (if you see The Best Years of Our Lives, you'd see Fredric March and Dana Andrews' characters keep their arguments to themselves and not get anyone else involved, not even their younger friend in the Navy who lost his hands).

   Of course, not all of the adults are this way. The one grown up who relates to the teens is the janitor. This shows an interesting image of the older white male who is in a place of power has no sympathies with the teenagers while the other older white male who occupies a blue collar job and slightly younger than the first is more willing to have sympathy, if one uses the biased lens. If the janitor were black, which is common where I am from, most people would think of him as the "magic Negro" who passes words of wisdom to younger white characters while showing to have more integrity than the white adults, all while supposedly keeping up the racism in society. Thankfully, they did not make him black, but one could interpret Carl as a black man in the scene where he talks to Vernon.
  The few times that Principal Vernon and Janitor Carl are together have the former let out the frustration on the behavior of the teens while Carl, being younger, tries to reason him. Contrast to The Trouble With Angels, which has similar themes to The Breakfast Club, we don't have a case of the school master and the rebellious student coming to an understanding. Vernon doesn't come to think there is anything good with Bender, whereas the Mother Superior saw plenty in Mary Clancy. Instead, Vernon pulls up the old "me, myself, and I" move when asked about how he feels of the teens. He admits to Janitor Carl the worst possible thing to him is what happens when the teens are adults and he's an old man, "Now this sort of thing wakes me up in the middle of the night: when I get older, these kids are going to take care of me." He doesn't trust them one bit and he thinks that when he becomes old and requires help and the only help will come in form of his former students, he is afraid that they will not really help him. I, myself, am still too young to understand what he is afraid of but I can think that being unable to take care of yourself to be something to dread. Most people try to avoid that by committing suicide and thus be able to die young. Unfortunately, suicide is not the answer. At any rate, Vernon could have taken a hint of those dreams and change. However, he does not seem to want to. Janitor Carl, who I think was only working as a janitor to pay for college, gives an excellent report on why Vernon is like this: "The kids haven't changed, you have. You took a teaching position, 'cause you thought it would be fun, right? Thought you would have summer vacations off and then you found out it was actually work and that really bummed you out." This, and the fact that Carl and Vernon believe that based on the way he treats teens would mean they won't take care of him when he gets older. Even with these abuses in authority, Vernon has been seen sighing in relief when he leaves the library the second time, builds weird object with a cup and pencils, and appears to regret threatening Bender. All that suggests that Vernon is less of a stock of a disciplinarian and more of an easy to sympathize character. Unfortunately, the man never changes his ways at the end of the film.
   The Breakfast Club is a teen flick, coming out in a time that people call a hey-day of teen flicks. It shares the same themes as the two other Molly Ringwald films: Sixteen Candles and Pretty In Pink, along with other films like Back to the Future, Farris Bueller's Day Off, Footloose, and Fast Times At Ridgecrest High, being teen flicks about teenage rebellion and anti-authority themed. The themes are handed down from the Sixties, where the themes of a generational gap were common, as well as the Seventies, but in the Eighties the anti-authority and teenage rebellion are common. If there is a theme to the usage of anti-authority and teenage rebellion being used in these films it would be that in the end, the teenage spirit of rebellion is never defeated. It doesn't matter how hard the adults come down on them, no matter what life lesson comes along to humble them, they are never truly defeated. Best examples of this in The Breakfast Club come with the teens interacting with themselves when Vernon is out of the room (disregarding all the rules he sets up in the beginning), subvert his directions of writing an essay by having Brian write it and sign their names upon it, and their dancing to hard rock near the end of the movie. Then there are other moments that are more subtle. Bender shouts out an obscenity when Vernon leaves after finding the door closed and he sneaks into the library after he is taken away. He even gives Janitor Carl a "see ya next Saturday" in such a matter of fact tone that you'd think he wanted to live in detention. Then there's the others who are willing to not rat him out when he returns to the library (even when Bender is peaking under Claire's skirt).
    So, this theme that the teenagers are never defeated resonates well in this movie as it does in other teen flicks of the time, and practically even today. At the end of Footloose, the teens are still going to dance to rock music, Fast Times... has them always doing things on their own and not heeding the adults, and Mean Girls' girls will always be plotting to ruin each other. Just as it is with The Breakfast Club. Those five teenagers will not have gained any respect for adults in authority even after their day in detention or of their parents in their homes. One additional way they are not defeated is the fact that they realize how they could become like their parents, while being controlled by their own peers, and chose to follow their own destinies.
    First impression is also the theme of The Breakfast Club. The teens enter as stock characters from each clique, yet the pivotable scene has them unfold how it feels to be each. Besides Bender becoming unfeeling toward others because of his blue collar back ground, we see Brian being such a perfectionist (he even corrects Mr. Vernon on one occasion) and yet doesn't want to be seen as a brain, Andrew feeling that he can never live up to his father's ideals no matter how hard he trains, Claire always being under pressure to be popular, and Allison withdraws from everyone and comes in when it seems people are having fun (she even claims she did nothing to get into detention). Among the things that happen due to this is one of the most common of nerd cliches being brought up (that Brian is a virgin). Brian lies of his love life at first but when pressured at the thought of being a pig in Claire's eyes, Brian admits to being a virgin (considering it a private matter). In a subversion of the stereotype, Claire says that it's okay for guys to be virgins. This is contrast to her case where she has to be pressured into it but not before we hear from Allison that girls live with a double-edged sword pointing at them ("If you want it, you're a slut; if you don't, you're a tease.") I do not put stock in the Madonna-Whore Complex but if there is one place to find it it'd be in high school, especially in the movies, where it seems girls are either Madonna like prudes or whores whom every boy wants to nail. One thing movies tend to show is while Madonnas can become whores through corruption, they never seem to have it the other way around (unless it's a teen flick I missed). This I find to be demeaning to girls who stay virgins through high school (as well as guys). Say all you want about recognizing sex as a healthy and normal part of life but just as people chose to do it, they can also chose not to do it and no one should be demeaned just for staying virgins.
   The teens soon learn that they are all alike even if they are in different social groups. This last proves to be the film's ultimate moral: that if you strip aside the glasses, the fingerless gloves, the gym pants, the hot clothes, and the tics, all you have left are five people who are frustrated at the way life turned out, angry at those they consider to be holding them back, and afraid of the transition they are facing. From this knowledge, they gradually begin to form a comradidy and form themselves a group they call "the Breakfast Club." One can dream that after the film's events, they are different to each other than before (Bender might defend Brian from other bullies, Claire will consider non-popular people to humans, Andrew will have a motive in life, etc.). The fact we see Claire decide to date Bender in the end (though it may be for selfish reasons and doomed to fail) and that Andrew is willing to date Allison are a step in the right direction. One may wonder why Brian doesn't get a girl in the end, but that part becomes less important. He gets something even better: respect. The other three ask him to write out the paper, seeing as he can sum it up better than they can, and he does so. Not only that, there is a chance that Claire and Andrew will both do something for him in return, even if the film doesn't dwell on it. But they see him as human and that is enough for him. Same with Claire and Bender. At the beginning, they hate each other with the standard blue collared boy and rich girl gig, but in the end, there is hints of them of pursuing a romance as Claire sees Bender as someone honest enough to treat her as a human instead of some idol to admired while Bender learns that one doesn't have to hold up a tough facade to get love.

   To wrap things up, The Breakfast Club is what people consider the ultimate teen movie. It's completely secular (practically reducing God to a name used in vain) and the references and talking of sex, plus a scene where the teens get high on Bender's dope, are questionable. The language is coarse, but some what accurate to high school standards in some places. Even with such, the morals of the movie are the redeeming qualities. Imagine if we could be like the five teens in the end of the movie and learn to not see each other as something form our impressions, look past stereotypes, past tropes, and see the person inside, come to an understanding with others, and learn to see each other as people, with all of us being sinners, and to know that there is someone who loves us all, than perhaps, we just may have peace on earth and good will toward men.