“The Breakfast Club” is far from a perfect film. It has some flaws, including an obvious lack of diversity, such as the lack of characters of color, characters with different sexual orientations and from different cultural backgrounds. In today’s society Hollywood is steadily leaning toward a more diverse cast in effort to give a better representation of the growing diversity of the world. Though Hollywood still has quite a way to go before accurate representation is achieved, it makes identifying with a character or a character’s troubles hard for those who don’t fit the “conventional” mold. While “The Breakfast Club” doesn’t represent for every teenager’s high school experience, its characters are still relatable.

It’s been over three decades since “The Breakfast Club”, director John Hughes’ best-known work debate, the film centers on the lives of five teenagers from different social cliques who have to spend a Saturday together in detention. The students discover they are not so different from one another and that they each struggle with a strained home life and peer pressure, perennial issues that still affect teenagers today. In fact, not much has changed about high school since 1985.

When watching this film for the first time it strikes someone, especially a high school student, as the powerful unsaid truth: high school is a place where you find yourself in other people and realize your flaws. While there are many difficulties you go through, how you seen others is usually only surface level. I see this movie as a right of passage for any teen because it makes you stop and think about those around you before deciding just how much you know them.