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By
NICK ZEGARAC
John Hughes' "The Breakfast
Club" is the brat pack movie that I venture to
guess will be long remembered as the watershed
moment for teen screen comedy in the American
cinema. The plot (for those not already familiar
with it) revolves around five angst-ridden
teenagers from various walks of life who are
forced to sit together through one Saturday
afternoon detention. There's Andrew (Emilio
Estevez) the driven jock who's in for taping a
fellow wrestler's buttocks with packing tape,
Claire (Molly Ringwald), a princess who ditched
class one afternoon to go shopping, John (Judd
Nelson), the bitter rebel to whom nothing is
taboo, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), a mama's boy
who almost committed suicide because he couldn't
accept failing a shop class assignment, and
Allison (Ally Sheedy), who's just generally
warped. She didn't even have to attend but came to
the detention because she had nowhere else to go!
A hilarious, well-crafted and often poignant film
about the fundamental truths that make us all
human, "The Breakfast Club" is perhaps the single
greatest exploration of that period of confusion
that plagues us all in the intern between child
and adulthood.
Universal's remastering efforts on this DVD
provide some of their own angst. Despite being
anamorphically enhanced for 16X9 displays, this
newly minted DVD offers nothing in the way of
video improvement over the previously issued
non-anamorphic DVD. Colors are dated, often
unbalanced and rendered with a decidedly soft
characteristic. Fine detail is generally lost,
even in well-lit scenes, thanks to a considerable
amount of film grain. Contrast, shadow and black
levels are all extremely weak. Age-related
artifacts, including chips, scratches and spiced
jump cuts are all evident. The audio -- remixed to
5.1 exhibits a dated characteristic with muffled
dialogue and practically no spatial separation,
except in the music tracks. There are no extras. |
