The Breakfast Club is one of those movies I ignored for a long time. I was only four years old during the film's theatrical run. It arrived unceremoniously on the shelf at Three's Company Video (my town's pre-Blockbuster mom-and-pop movie haven), and I passed it over for more robust cinematic pleasures like Transformers: The Movie (I wore out the tape with frequent rentals, but in 1986 the thought of just buying the damn thing didn't occur to us).

For years The Breakfast Club sat in my peripheral vision, doomed by an odd title (I thought it sounded like The Babysitters Club) and a cast that meant little to me. Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall had been supplanted as teen idols by the time I was a teen. Judd Nelson and Emilio Estevez were historical curiosities: "Oh, so that's what Hot Rod looks like as a human... Hey, it's Billy the Kid in a hoodie!"

I finally discovered the film on cable. I'm not sure of my age at the time; I was young enough to look up to the characters, but old enough to feel kinship with them, even if they inhabited an 80's landscape that seemed quaintly anachronistic. By the mid-90's there was no shortage of John Hughes imitators, but his willingness to imbue teenage characters with genuine emotion - to give them real ideas and the ability to express them intelligently - still seemed radical.

I wish more filmmakers were like John Hughes. I'm not suggesting we need a spate of teen dramedies (it's unfair, but already 'teen angst guy' seems to be his epitaph). I just wish more writers and directors would follow Hughes' example and ignore the constraints of genre when creating characters. Hughes could have peopled his "teen movies" with cardboard cutouts - the jock, the nerd, the prom queen. In fact he did use these stereotypes, but only as starting points. In The Breakfast Club, he allows us our preconceptions, then strips them away to reveal thinking, breathing human beings.

It's been another summer of comic book movies, and there have been precious few three-dimensional characters strutting about in front of the explosions. I'm convinced the makers of these films have the ability to create unique and interesting characters. They just can't be bothered. Somewhere in the creative process, they decided - maybe subconsciously - "Oh, it's just a (comic book/action/kids) movie." It's as if someone imposed a quota on well-written characters, and they need to be saved for dramatic, independent, or Oscar-baiting "prestige" films.

John Hughes would have none of that. He didn't always succeed, but he tried to populate his imaginary worlds with real people. I'm not a great fan of Home Alone (penned by Hughes), but Kevin McCallister has to be one of the best-written eight-year-olds in screen history. Hughes didn't crib from the Big Book of Annoying Movie Children, which seems to occupy most writers' shelves.

I hope TBS (Peachtree?) runs another marathon of The Breakfast Club soon. Failing that, Ferris Bueller's Day Off would be a fine substitute. Somehow you don't mind visiting Hughes' characters over and over again. They're like part of your extended film family. They're sad, funny, neurotic, strange and yet familiar. And you miss them when they're gone.