The Class

Great programming for a young audience. It is clearly an homage to John Hughes... but it is made modern in its concerns, accounting for school shootings and the general anxiety and fear felt by kids in school today. A group of misfits are tasked with a detention theater class that requires them to bring their own experiences to the work of acting a character. The class allows each to confront the weighty issues keeping them from living their authentic lives. In a clever self-reflection, each actor in this movie is tasked with doing the exact same thing, and some honest acting is accomplished here. Nice chemistry among the cast. Really well done!

You can't help but compare this to TBC. It just shows how amazing John Hughes was because these 2 films are light years apart. The fact everyone stills talk about TBC just proves how legendary of a film it was. The problem with The Class It tries so hard that it never really hits the mark. The characters are hard too like and every problem they have are so dark that it feels over the top. TBC felt genuine but The Class feels forced. This film had potential but sadly it lacks the quality and heart. Sometime you have to realise that you are always going to be in shadows of the Greats. The Class is not a Class Act. You won't be talking about this film in 40 years......forget about me.

Bear with me.

We have Lyric Ross who has demonstrated wide emotional depth and tremendous talent on This Is Us playing an edgy teen. There is Debbie Gibson coming in as a teacher who most know as a pop star from the 80s but she is also a Broadway caliber actress. In a gimmick casting we have the vice-principal played by Anthony Michael Hall, a darling of John Hughes films who continued his acting career for decades, as well as John Kapelos also of The Breakfast Club playing a parent to one of the teens. We have a newer talent in Charlie Gillespie who rose to fame in Daytime EMMY winning Julie and the Phantoms (as the Bender type character). We should have a hit on our hands in this "reimagined" (cough remade cough) Breakfast Club. But unlike the 1985 classic, the writing is bad. The directing is bad. The editing is bad. I blame this on the director of this film who also wrote it and cast one of his kids as one of the stars. She is no Molly Ringwald.

Fashioned as a more contemporary version tackling issues not widely discussed in The Breakfast Club, there was so much potential. Good actors and a proven premise combined with a good original song performed by Hannah Kepple of Cobra Kai fame fell short because the cast can only work with what is in the script.

There were some good dramatic moments which could have been played out in more depth but instead were cut between goofy unneeded antics or trying to split the cast up into too many locations. It was disjointed and it always felt like I was coming into the middle of a conversation. Had the stories been allowed to be fully fleshed out, or perhaps the characters been left together and forced to be in each other's space like in The Breakfast Club some magic could have happened. I rated it higher than it probably deserves because the seeds are there and we all have different taste so others will probably love it. The best scene of the movie, in my opinion, is almost at the end so stick around for it.

... which is the test first suggested by Roger Ebert: if in the first 20 mins of a feature film, you cannot come up with even one reason to continue to watch, it is a fail. The producers behind this debacle are not the first to attempt to improve on something that was already perfection (THE BREAKFAST CLUB 1985), nor will they be the last. In a script clearly meant to make the audience focus on the kids, the only cast member here who constantly catches the camera's eye is Debbie Gibson -- she fairly bounces from scene to scene. Casting one of the original members of TBC was a smart touch, but Anthony Michael Hall, now in his 50s, looks older than he is, and seems to be on set just for the payday. A swing and a miss. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

I wish more directors and producers were willing to talk about the topics that The Class dove right into. In today's day and age, there is a lot young people are going through, unfortunately. There is so much hate and chaos around them. But on the other side, there is also a lot of love and if you look for it, peace too. The Class teaches its viewers that. It is bringing people with different stories together to instead help one another overcome their problems.

I loved and thoroughly enjoyed watching the class! I would recommend anyone who cares about the younger generations to watch this movie to really think about what is going on today.