The Breakfast Club made The Criterion Collection in the Blu-ray era. Now it’s upgraded to 4K UHD. The seminal John Hughes movie is still relevant. We may have more devices and technology now, but teenagers, and all people, are often confined to boxes they don’t fit.
The film is all in one room, basically. If they get out of the library, it’s bare school halls or Vernon (Paul Gleason)’s cluttered office, the gym, inside the ceiling or the basement file rooms. The lack of shadow in these settings is the point. It’s all overlit from above, but you still see the grain of the film.
Criterion even added some new extras to their addition and the archival features. Judd Nelson reads Hughes’ production notes. The character names keep changing. Hughes wrote mostly short phrases because he knew what he meant.
A This American Life episode from 2023 is new to this addition. The interview with Molly Ringwald shows she’s being a really good parent, explaining the movie to a 10-year-old when she gets upset.
Of course, the archival extras are the most ‘80s so those take you back in time.