20 awesome ’80s movies you should totally see before you die

19. The Breakfast Club (1985)

The Breakfast Club  chronicles the misadventures of five teenagers as they spend the day in Saturday detention. The film was directed by John Hughes who had the undeniable knack of nailing teenage angst in the ’80s.

Brian Johnson (Anthony Michael Hall) is a “brain,” John Bender (Judd Nelson) is a “criminal,” Andrew Clark (Emilio Estevez) is an “athlete,” Allison Reynolds (Ally Sheedy) is a “basket case,” and Claire Standish (Molly Ringwald) is a “princess.”

Hall and Molly Ringwald, who was undeniably Hughes’ muse, worked with the director before on Sixteen Candles. Ringwald and Hall dated briefly between filming the two movies. Sometimes the geek does get the girl.

As the day progresses, walls come down, and the group finds they have a lot more in common than not. These personas don’t define who each character is, and the real roadblocks to their happiness are their parents and the establishment (in this case, high school) that labels them in the first place.

The film is an extraordinarily well-blended mix of humor, heartbreak, and anger as each character displays a pantheon of raw emotions, realizing their friendships and romances don’t stand a chance outside this precious cocoon.

The members of the cast became known as the “Brat Pack,” a term coined by a writer for New York Magazine in an article in 1985.

The Breakfast Club was well-received by critics, and the movie has landed on several “Best of” lists compiled by Entertainment Weekly, Empire and The New York Times — not to mention the countless homages and parodies, showing up everywhere from The Simpsons to Dawson’s Creek.