Dear Brat Pack: A ‘Brats’ Review
I love you, but I don’t feel bad for you.
By Erin Mantz, A Gen X girl
I watched the long-awaited ‘Brats” documentary on Hulu last night with extremely high expectations. Actor/Director Andrew McCarthy reunited with some of his Brat Pack buddies from the ’80s, taking Gen Xers behind the scenes and back to our coming-of-age years. I’m not sure I understood the reason for the journey.
As a tried-and-true member of Generation X (and now a card-carrying member of AARP!), I was so excited to see this, but also a bit scared. What if I wasn’t ready to realize the Brat Pack has grown up? Maybe it’s best to remember them young, in the ’80s world, where we all once lived and loved.
But…Rob Lowe. As the Brat Pack members looked back, Rob seemed to have the most upbeat attitude about it all. And let’s face it. We could look at his face for hours. We DID used to look at his face for hours — at the movie theater, through Blockbuster VHS tapes in our rec rooms, and with posters on our bedroom walls.
If the Brat Pack’s very existence is questionable (which ‘Brats’ ponders in detail), it almost doesn’t matter. They were the beacon for our generation, and I need to believe in that.
As the Founder of Gen X Girls Grow Up, a 39,000-strong Facebook community of women now 44–59, nobody loves and celebrates ’80s nostalgia more! But I still struggled to understand the point of this documentary.
1985 marked a particularly pivotal year for their movies, their rise to fame, and the famous David Blum New York Magazine article that smacked on the “Brat Pack” label. It was also my high school sophomore year. There is nothing like being 15 at the height of the Brat Pack pop culture spotlight at that time. Real life, in so many ways, followed oddly close. Crushes and keg parties, high school cliques and locker chats. Teenage angst, questioning everything, but just not knowing much. I loved those times. I miss those times.
Which is why I had such high hopes hitting play on ‘Brats.” It would take me back for a few hours! Would I get some behind-the-scenes scoop and never-before-seen footage? Would viewers and fans finally hear exactly why Andrew McCarthy resented the Brat Pack name so much?
No. But here’s what I did take away:
- Andrew McCarthy has a lot of feelings about the “Brat Pack” label. He took us on a feature-length journey to find answers and I still have absolutely no idea what the problem is. I don’t even see it as a problem.
- I don’t think Emilio Estevez understood Andrew’s relentless through-the-looking glass inquisition either. As they were standing in Emilio’s kitchen chatting, they didn’t seem to have anything in common but their matching denim shirts. Is it me, or did Emilio look at Andrew like he was crazy?
- The one thing I am sure hasn’t changed in decades is that Rob’s smile is melting millions of hearts every moment he appears in this documentary.
- Ally Sheedy seems very smart, unaffected and down to earth. All those books in her living room background back up this suspicion.
- The view from author Malcolm Gladwell’s kitchen is incredible.
- I wish they spent more time rehashing stories like the one where Rob and Andrew stumble from Spago with Liza Minnelli to after-hours drinks at Sammy Davis Jr’s house.
- Toward the end of the film, as Andrew rides up in the elevator to interview journalist Blum — the writer who started it all by coining that term in his 1985 article while dining out with the Brat Pack guys — all I could think was this: Will Andrew get the explanation he is after, and does Blum really need to apologize for anything? (Also, can’t we go back to Rob’s place?)
- Why wouldn’t Lea Thompson take her sunglasses off?
I think Andrew is a super-thoughtful guy and wonderful actor who was perfectly cast in many great films. But I don’t get his investigative approach to this label.
What the film gets right is amplifying the fact that Brat Pack movies — and their music — were an intricate part of our coming-of-age lives in the ’80s (and brings back many great memories now). Andrew says they were members of a club they never asked to join. But they seem to be in really, really good company. I still don’t know why the “Brat Pack” label was so problematic for him, and I don’t think it really matters to fans.
As producer Lauren Shuler Donner (St. Elmo’s Fire & Pretty in Pink) tries to remind Andrew, the Brat Pack is part of the world’s ’80s lexicon — and it’s good to be proud of that! Their stories of grappling with life, love and friendship with no real sense of the future — that’s what so many of us were living in real life as they played it out on the screen. That is what is so moving to remember. I feel bad even writing anything negative. It makes me want to whisper in Andrew’s ear “I love you. Always…” like he said to Molly Ringwald at the end of “Pretty in Pink.”
By the end of the film, I thought of Rob’s line in St. Elmo’s Fire: “There wasn’t even a St. Elmo. They made it up. They made it up because they thought they needed it to keep them going when times got tough, just like you’re making up all of this.”
Please don’t tell Generation X the “Brat Pack” was never real.
#brats #bratpack #80s #generationx #genx #genxgirl
