The Class

I don’t know anyone who basically breezed through their teens unscathed. As much as adolescence has changed from generation to generation, the problems remain the same. Writer-director Nicholas Celozzi’s feature film, The Class, takes on teens’ concerns in this modern-day take on The Breakfast Club, which ironically stars Anthony Michael Hall.

The Class is set on Saturday afternoon when six high school seniors are given a chance to make up a missed exam or suffer the fate of post-graduation summer school. As par for the course, a diverse group of students — diverse in terms of personalities and circumstances — enter weekend detention and are greeted by assistant principal Mr. Faulk (Anthony Michael Hall) and Ms. Long (Debbie Gibson).

“…Long insists on digging deep into why these students are not taking their education seriously.”

All Mr. Faulk wants is for the students to take the exam and leave, but Ms. Long wants to make this a meaningful, mind-blowing weekend. Her assignment is for the students to pair up and create a brief, dramatic scene with characters the students create. Clearly, the project has more to it than Faulk realizes. The arriving students don’t want to be here and, like Faulk, want to be done with the exam and leave. But Long insists on digging deep into why these students are not taking their education seriously.

Michael (Michael Sebastian) often broods and has ideations of violence toward life and his classmates. Jessie (Hannah Kepple) is a quiet student faced with an insurmountable mountain to climb that the others know nothing about. Allie (Juliette Celozzi) has been rejected all her life and constantly misunderstood by her classmates. Jason (Charlie Gillespie) is the cool guy who lives for today without much insight into his past or future. Max (Colin McCalla) longs to be his true self but must play the role his family and friends expect. Lastly, Casey (Lyric Ross) has a past that she keeps hidden and, as a result, puts up walls to keep her friends at arm’s length.