I can’t watch those movies now either, but I saw them when released, and they were indeed popular and at the time, and considered new and different.
He captured “teen angst” of the 1980s in a way that hadn’t been done before. Molly Ringwald was a sweet girl with a woman’s emotions and Matthew Broderick was still a kid, but with the manipulative ability of an adult. His films didn’t involve gratuitous sex, violence, or dirty language either, which automatically (and smartly) made them “mass-market.”
The common theme of his “coming of age” films was emotionally mature and intelligent children in conflict with obtuse or wooden adults around them.
I guess Gen-X kids liked this. It was somehow particular to that era
But I agree with you - watching teen angst now as a middle-aged adult is cringe-inducing, like looking through awkward yearbook photos.
Emilio Estevez did a masterful job with his 2011 movie, "The Way," starring his dad. In some ways, it's kind of a grown up "Breakfast Club," with a spiritual/religious bent. Estevez somehow got his dad to bottle his politics and focus on his Catholicism long enough to make the movie, which does contain one or two subtle visual allusions to Breakfast Club.
If you haven't seen it, it's worth (IMHO) taking the time to watch. It also serves as a very tender bookend to Martin Sheen's 1988 movie, Da, in which Sheen plays an Irish born playwrite who is living in NYC and has to return to Ireland to sort through his father's affairs after his father dies. The Way is likewise a touching movie about generational relationship, with Sheen as the father this time, dealing with the death of his son.