Critics Scoreboard
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Average Critic Score:
62
(11 sources)
62
(11 sources)
-
80
Film Threat
This could have been an unmitigated disaster, but Hughes' way with the material ensured it a special place in the heart of just about everyone who happened to be in high school while Ronald Reagan was President. Read Full Review » -
78
Austin Chronicle
Before lapsing into the land of the insipid,... John Hughes actually made a few movies that shined some light on the trials of modern adolescence. The Breakfast Club is one of them. Read Full Review » -
75
Entertainment Weekly
From the neon-sign opening titles to the derivative angst of the dialogue, it's a touchstone of '80s pop culture, and a schizophrenic one, too. Read Full Review » -
75
ReelViews
Eminently watchable and consistently entertaining...It has a candor that is unexpected and refreshing in a sea of too-often generic teen-themed films. Read Full Review » -
75
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
For all its contrivance, it's lively and amusing and occasionally disconcerting in its reproduction of what life was like in the mid-to-late teens. Read Full Review » -
70
Chicago Reader
Comes to the comforting conclusion that they're just as alienated, idealistic, and vulnerable as the baby boomers of the 1960s. Read Full Review » -
70
Washington Post
Their conversations give The Breakfast Club its snap, crackle and pop. And this is that rare movie that could benefit from another half hour of talking time. [15 Feb 1985] Read Full Review » -
60
TV Guide
Hughes, though he gives the material a sense of fun and achieves several moments of genuine warmth, too often resorts to obvious cliches, stereotypes, and easy answers, and throws in the near-obligatory rock video as well. Read Full Review » -
60
The New York Times
The five young stars would have mixed well even without the fraudulent encounter-group candor towardS which The Breakfast Club forces them. Mr. Hughes, having thought up the characters and simply flung them together, should have left well enough alone. Read Full Review » -
40
The New Yorker
But all that this encounter-session movie actually does is strip a group of high-school kids down to their most banal longings to be accepted and liked. Its real emblem is that dreary, retro ribbon. [8 Apr 1985, p.123] Read Full Review » -
30
Variety
Does director John Hughes really believe, as he writes here, that 'when you grow up, your heart dies.' It may. But not unless the brain has already started to rot with films like this. Read Full Review »
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