Fünf Jugendliche, die unterschiedlicher nicht sein können, haben eins gemeinsam: Sie bekommen wegen verschiedener Vergehen Arrest aufgebrummt. Sie müssen sich einen ganzen Nachmittag gemeinsam um die Ohren schlagen und einen Aufsatz schreiben. Zunächst können die Kids nichts miteinander anfangen, doch im Laufe des Tages entdecken sie in Gesprächen plötzlich Gemeinsamkeiten...

"The premise is deceptively straightforward: five teenagers – from different social strata, each uncomfortably navigating the pressures and expectations of the typical American high school – find themselves confined to the school library for detention one Saturday morning. They view one another with mutual suspicion and defensiveness at first, then spend the ensuing hours dismantling those defenses, bickering, brooding, teasing, confiding, and commiserating. In the hands of John Hughes and his prodigiously gifted ensemble of young actors, the result is transcendent: a parable of human beings on the cusp of adulthood, confronted with the startling truth that finding ways to connect authentically with other people is essential to the work of being and knowing oneself. Shot on location in the Chicago suburbs of the filmmaker's youth, with compassion and an emotional specificity that transcends generations, its legacy only continues to grow more than three decades after its release." (--- Film at Lincoln Center)

"Rarely have on-screen teens felt this authentic. They bluster, bicker and trade horrible insults, then suddenly expose their most guarded feelings. They’re illogical and erratic — which is to say, utterly real. Credit goes to Hughes’ heart-on-sleeve dialogue but also to the performers, who deliver even underwhelming lines with raw emotional force." (--- Newsday)

"Smoking pot is THE thing that breaks down the barriers. Hughes doesn't couch it in a warning to the kids in the audience, he doesn't try to say 'drugs are bad' at the same time … No. It's unabashedly positive. They all get stoned, and then the next shot is them sitting on the floor … talking … when all kinds of emotional, dramatic, and funny things happen. There's a direct correlation there." (--- Sheila O'Malley, The Sheila Variations (2005))