7 Excellent Coming Of Age Movies
4. The Breakfast Club
A group of misfits has a Saturday detention; controlled chaos ensues.
The Breakfast Club is an eminent classic, nobody needs me to tell them that. It absolutely excels as a coming of age movie, too. To anyone who went to school and belonged to any one other "clique", it can seem like anyone outside the group is an "enemy" and should be shunned. The Breakfast Club shows us that's just not true; everyone's got their issues hidden away.
The five students are given a short essay to write during their time to explain exactly "who they think they are". Whilst Assistant Principal Vernon might see this as an abstract punishment, the five members of the "Brat Pack" end up using their brief time together to break down the barriers that high school puts up. They find that they all have struggling relationships with their parents, and all want to burst out of their respective bubbles a little.
Finally, The Breakfast Club gave rise to one of the greatest movie outro monologues in history; lead deliquent John reciting how all five found "each one of us is a brain, and an athlete, and a basket case, a princess, and a criminal".