Movie Review
The Brat Pack reunites for a trip down memory lane in Brats
Rob Lowe and Andrew McCarthy in Brats.
If you were a movie fan in the 1980s, then you knew about the so-called “Brat Pack.” The term, which originated from a June 1985 New York magazine article about Emilio Estevez headlined “Hollywood’s Brat Pack,” referred to a nebulous group of young actors who seemed to herald a sea change in the types of movies the industry was making. The article’s author, David Blum, name-checked a select few – Estevez, Tom Cruise, Judd Nelson, Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon – but the term quickly came to encompass others for a variety of reasons.
One of those was Andrew McCarthy, who became a member by virtue of starring in the 1985 ensemble film St. Elmo’s Fire. He and the others came to resent the label, thinking it to be reductive and inaccurate, despite the fact that many of them starred in multiple movies together. Now, almost 40 years later, McCarthy is attempting to sort through those complicated feelings by directing the new Hulu documentary, Brats.
McCarthy makes himself the face of the film, conducting self-interviews of sorts while walking or driving. He also takes it upon himself to reach out to anyone who was labeled or associated with the Brat Pack to see if they would be willing to talk about that time of their life. This leads to interviews with a variety of actors, including Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Jon Cryer, Lea Thompson, Hutton, Demi Moore, and Rob Lowe.
What comes out of these conversations is how baffling each of them found the frenzy surrounding the term, especially since most of them didn’t hang out with each other away from movie sets. And while McCarthy and others say that the label tapped into the fears/doubts the actors had about themselves, others like Cryer and Thompson lament that they weren’t “officially” members.
The interviews also reveal that no one can agree on who exactly was part of the group. Those who starred in St. Elmo’s Fire – McCarthy, Lowe, Moore, Nelson, Estevez, and Sheedy – seem to be at the top of the heap, but whither their co-star Mare Winningham? Three of those six actors also starred in 1985’s The Breakfast Club, but only one of that film’s other two stars – Molly Ringwald – is mentioned in the film, with the name Anthony Michael Hall never even coming up.
McCarthy illustrates the media obsession with the group by showing a variety of old interviews with himself and other stars. He also conducts interviews with industry insiders like director Howard Deutch and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, pop culture critic Ira Madison III, novelist Bret Easton Ellis, and others to get the perspective of people not in the group. He even tracks down Blum, resulting in an illuminating talk that ends with the two expressing feelings of a kinship with each other.
What becomes evident is that the name “Brat Pack” represented a specific moment in time, and then somehow morphed to define an entire generation of actors. As McCarthy says in the film, “That it didn’t really exist doesn’t even matter.” That’s because many of them felt that the name changed how they were perceived in the industry, and therefore limited the potential of many of their careers.
Despite the somewhat downbeat nature of their conversations, fans of the actors will likely get a jolt of enjoyment at seeing them reconnect after all these years. And McCarthy makes liberal use of both scenes from films of the era and the iconic songs that came from them, leaning heavily into the nostalgia they elicit. The very last scene hits the perfect note for both, connecting the documentary to a film many know and love.
While how the label of “Brat Pack” affected a small number of actors is not the most important topic in the world, the enduring movies they made in a short period of time represent an important part of movie history. If nothing else, Brats further demonstrates how actors share the same doubts, fears, and insecurities about themselves as everyday people. The only difference is the light shined upon them can exacerbate those feelings immeasurably.
---
Brats is now streaming on Hulu.
Camp Christmas at Annette Strauss Square
Photo courtesy of AT&T Performing Arts Center