Class (2022)
Directed by Nicholas Celozzi
Written by Nicholas Celozzi
Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Debbie Gibson, John Kapelos
The Breakfast Club (1985)
Directed by John Hughes
Written by John Hughes
Starring Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald, Paul Gleason
Class stars Debbie Gibson and Anthony Michael Hall in an update of the classic Breakfast Club formula that Hall is inextricably linked to. It’s the story of a detention class in a nondescript modern High School. Gibson plays Miranda, the school drama teacher in charge of the latest detention group. She’s seconded by the hardass School Guidance Counselor, Mr. Faulk (Hall). In Faulk, Hall is playing a role similar to that of Paul Gleason’s far more broad caricature of a guidance counselor in the John Hughes classic.
I say that Gibson and Hall are the stars but they are really parts of an ensemble and since this is a movie about kids, high school, and detention, it’s the students who are center stage for the movie. Naturally, the kids fall into types, the stoner, the jock, the popular girl, the outcast and so on. There are a couple gender flips and the spectrum of sexual identities are in play, but much like The Breakfast Club, the point of having character types is to subvert those types and break through to the real person beneath.
Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here.
