10 Most Inspirational Teen Movies Of All Time

"You're an idiot anyway. But if you say you get along with your parents, well, you're a liar too."

More of a sociological experiment than a strict cinematic narrative, The Breakfast Club places five socially disparate high school students into Saturday detention - the club of the title - and traps them in a room together for the day.

The film explores the fractured relationship between the classmates, who are virtual strangers at the beginning and slightly more, slightly less than friends by the end: reopening old wounds and tracing old scars, the lies, the truths and the stories that grow up in between.

Although he was in his mid-thirties when he hit the streak of films that made his name, John Hughes made those movies from a teenager’s point of view. His films treated teenagers as though they were as smart, capable and responsible as they imagined themselves to be, and encouraged the adolescent aspiration to independence, agency and the interrogation of authority.

There are so many definitive, iconic moments in The Breakfast Club that it seems almost redundant to list them all, but it’s the conversations that stay with you, not the confrontations. The scene where Allison admits to being a nymphomaniac; Bender acting out a conversation between him and his violent dad; Claire, trying to open up and being shut down because they can’t bring themselves to believe that the princess’ life isn’t perfect.

In the end, the kids come to realise - after an hour and a half of catharsis - that they’re more similar than they are different. There are no illusions that this revelation will stick, that Monday morning won’t see athlete Andrew ignoring basket case Allison or recidivist Bender bullying nerdy Brian… and of course, the whole exercise is incredibly contrived, if you stop too long to think it over.

Nonetheless, The Breakfast Club works, and it works like gangbusters - it’s as cathartic for the audience watching as it is for the characters acting the melodrama out, by turns harrowing, hilarious, redemptive and reductive. Chances are, if you saw this film for the first time as a teenager, it changed your life: at the very least, you left feeling utterly exhilarated, for one frozen moment raising a fist in empathy at the climax.