The Reel Review
A group of young actors and actresses dominated the movie industry in the 1980s, at a time when there was an abundance of movies about teens and young adults. Writer/director/actor Andrew McCarthy’s documentary explores how their being flippantly dubbed the “Brat Pack” in a 1985 New York Magazine article negatively impacted their careers, some forever.
It’s pretty obvious that McCarthy’s film is little more than self-indulgent, personal therapy of interest only to him, as he meets up with former Brat Pack members – Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Demi Moore and Rob Lowe – and even a couple who were merely Brat Pack adjacent: Jon Cryer and Lea Thompson. McCarthy talks a lot about how the film industry turned on them after that nickname went viral. They mostly just politely nod and smile.
For fans of those 1980s movies, Brats is a mildly nostagic and bittersweet walk down memory lane, primarily to see our young 80s movie icons as they are today. But the tedious format, an hour and a half of McCarthy goading his former co-stars (some uncomfortably so) and others to whine with him about that oh-so-important article, gets old real fast, as does his technique of showing camera operators surrounding him and his fellow actors as though this is groundbreaking cinema.
REEL FACTS
• Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson opted not to participate in Andrew McCarthy’s documentary.
• Mare Winningham, the only star of 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire who was not part of the Brat Pack, was pregnant with her second child while filming that movie.
• Andrew McCarthy based his documentary on his 2021 book “Brat: an ’80s story.”
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