Based upon the memoir Brat: An 80s Story (2021) by Andrew McCarthy
Directed by Andrew McCarthy
***1/2 (three and a half stars)
UNRATED
I am going to go on record as having always hated the moniker "Brat Pack."
I was a teenager during the mid to late 1980's and as a budding cinephile, especially one who was urgently consuming nearly everything I was able to see, I took to the rise of the youth based teen film to a level that ran soul deep. Of course, at first, the genre was relegated to forgettable sex comedies and slasher films and still--save for the slasher films--I found myself watching every one that came along, knowing all the while of their poor, overly salacious and honestly regrettably distasteful attitude towards the subject matter and target audience. Frankly, thee films existed in the porn fueled fantasy world of adult male screenwriters and directors and never seemed to exist in any universe remotely resembling adolescence.
And then, I saw Director Amy Heckerling and Writer Cameron Crowe's "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" (1982). While those salacious qualities, as advertised in the film's title remained, Heckerling and Crowe devised an entirely different tonality: one that was firmly footed in reality. It was a recognizable world with fully recognizably vivid emotions, moods and tenors wile also being extremely funny and endlessly quotable. I rewatched that film endlessly.
This was soon followed by Director Martha Coolidge's surprisingly tender and no less entertaining "Valley Girl" (1983) and as anyone who knows me has ever known, by the time Writer/Producer/Director John Hughes arrived with "Sixteen Candles" (1984) and "The Breakfast Club" (1985), my head was blown apart while my heart swelled and soared.
At last, here were films about teenagers that felt as if they arrived from the audiences they were intended for. I recognized myself. I recognized my friends and classmates. I recognized the trials and turbulence of adolescents and Hughes in particular showed an astounding empathy towards the process of growing up while also giving us opportunities to find the humor in situations that were otherwise confusing, painful and in the perceptions of our our adolescent hearts, a stretch of time that felt ever ongoing.
Being right at the center of what would eventually be called "Generation X," a nation of kids who were often left to their own desires and voices that were essentially disregarded, John Hughes and like minded filmmakers created works that gave us a voice and the respect for our experience growing up, devising stories that spoke truth to our emotional states and told the world that just because we are young, it does not negate our stories being told with as much respect and dignity as films about adult characters.
And with the very best examples of the genre, in addition to the sharp writing and direction, the conduits for these stories, their impact and their longevity rested heroically in the actors who embodies these characters.
Andrew McCarthy was one of the actors during that period that I did gravitate towards for I admired his fearlessness with displaying a level of sensitivity that was not the typical norm for male characters within the genre. There was a thoughtfulness to him, a pensive sometimes aloof, introverted quality that I responded to and kept returning to in films I revered as well as others I felt less successful yet he nonetheless remained magnetic. He was a figure who gave me a voice on screen as much as the likes of Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and John Cusack, while others like Judd Nelson, James Spader, Tom Cruise, Emilio Estevez, Eric Stoltz, Ally Sheedy and definitely Sean Penn for example always informed me that there was the potential for quality in whatever projects they chose to align themselves with.
The relationships formulated were palpable even though we would never meet in person. In fact, due to their consistent presence, combined with the proximity to our ages, it was not out of the question to kind of think of these figures as being auxiliary classmates as we watched them grow and develop right alongside ourselves.
And then, on the cover of the June 10, 1985 issue of New York magazine, just months after the release of "The Breakfast Club" and a mere few weeks before the release of Director Joel Schumacher's "St. Elmo's Fire" (1985), starring seven notable young actors including Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, in addition to Sheedy, Nelson, Estevez and McCarthy, Journalist David Blum's article with the now iconic headline hit like a smart bomb: "Hollywood's Brat Pack."
Nothing would be the same again regarding the pop culture zeitgeist at the time for those of us in the audience as fans and unquestionably for the actors themselves.
Andrew McCarthy's thoroughly enjoyable new documentary film "Brats" explores the fallout from that one article in regards to himself and his contemporaries during the 1980's and now its legacy, which for almost 40 years has straddled the thin line between pejorative and badge of honor depending upon whom is asked.
What could have existed solely as a nostalgia piece, designed squarely for the teenagers of the time, McCarthy has ultimately devised an experience that is more introspective and emotionally and philosophically wide ranged than expected. Yes, the memories flood back for us as well as the film's participants but they are revisited in the way that we all regard our collective pasts, with deeper perspectives, viewpoints that either are more entrenched or surprisingly altered and all delving into how we all perceive ourselves in comparison and contrast to how how we are seen by others. And in consequence, how did those perceptions, from ourselves and from others affect or even form the trajectories of our lives?
With "Brats," Andrew McCarthy as our main protagonist and as the film's director decides to confront this very inner quandary by attempting to reunite with the principal members of the "Brat Pack," some of whom he has not seen or spoken to in decades, to at long last discuss and ruminate over what this one article meant to them at the time and if emotions have deepened or changed altogether. McCarthy embarks upon a cross country voyage to visit the likes of Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe among others.
I previously mentioned that I had thought--and I guess that I still do--think of these actors as existing as auxiliary classmates and at face value, Andrew McCarthy's "Brats" succeeds as a sort of a cinematic class reunion. I was genuinely warmed by seeing these actors again on screen and regarding how they engaged with each other. But where the film struck some gold for me was how it showcased a certain pathos that is indeed inherent but was unexpected.
Initially, I was experiencing the feeling that Andrew McCarthy was speaking a lot, and maybe to the detriment of us hearing what his colleagues had to say in return. Yet soon, it struck me that we were regarding that certain vulnerability that McCarthy exuded in his '80's era film performances but this time, we were witnessing the real man struggling with coming to terms with the life he may had desired for himself as an actor and the life it ultimately became after the article was released to the world. We discover more about the inner lives of himself and others that we were all completely unaware of during the '80's, most notably de to the lack of social media. Furthermore, it illuminates that these people whop feel so larger than life to us in the audience, just happened to be the same striving, trying, yet scared young people simply aiming to find their respective places in the world, in their cases within an unforgiving business in Hollywood.
What results in Andrew McCarthy's "Brats" is a series of exchanges that illuminate their personal relationships with each other combined with the sheer irony of this extreme situation. They existed inside of the sheer fallacy of what the term represented as they were decidedly not a grouping of individuals constantly in communion professionally and socially. We learn that even they did not understand or agree upon actually who was and was not perceived to be included in The Brat Pack or whether they were Brat Pack adjacent. We learn of the ultimate contrast in the perceptions of them and their talents within the industry to how their notoriety with fans actually increased and intensified due to this collective name.
And McCarthy, throughout the film, continues his travels and engages in conversations in what is essentially a road trip as therapy and truthfully, I was moved as he seemed to be processing his feelings towards whatever "The Brat Pack" meant and means in real time.
At the outset of this review, I remarked that I have always hated the term "Brat Pack." It was openly dismissive, churlish and with this one phrase, it swiftly dismantled everything that had been worked upwards with regards to giving a significant cultural voice to a generation, from the audience certainly and to the actors themselves, undeniably. Even then, at the age of 16 in 1985, it was obvious to me that David Blum coined a term that was meant to knock this generation of actors off whatever pedestal they had ascended to by grouping everyone together as vapid, overprivileged, untalented individuals who just got lucky and are collectively coasting on unearned fame.
We learn throughout "Brats" that the actors felt wounded to varying degrees by the name and article so much so that they rejected each other professionally, declining potentially good projects because of one actor's proximity to another, and sometimes feeling that the goals they had envisioned for themselves were now unattainable. This aspect of the film, and especially during the striking sequence where McCarthy engages in conversation with David Blum himself, where a greater truth is unveiled.
I remember that back in 1985, I had seen an interview with John Hughes who expressed that one of the messages he was trying to convey within his films was for people to just take a f ew moments before tearing someone down for we never know what ripple effects would occur and then reverberate over time. Andrew McCarthy's "Brats" feels to be a representation of that very sentiment as a journalist, whoa t the time was 29 years old, was also young, competitive, possibly scared and attempting to make his way within an unforgiving business made a rash decision in order to advance himself at the expense of others (which also illustrates how writers are often writing for the attention of other writers).
Yet, what cannot be denied is how the generation of fans that embraced them in the 1980's have only continued to embrace these actors and the seminal projects that spoke the deepest. To that, the term of "Brat Pack" holds a different significance and weight, showcasing that their work did indeed provide meaning and engagement in addition to entertainment. In doing so, was this term as terrible as it felt on the inside? Was it a value judgement upon them as artists and human beings?
Andrew McCarthy's "Brats" allowed me to contemplate my own life, how I see myself and how I think that I am being seen by others if I am being seen at all and how has all of that affected my own life path. I can understand McCarthy's struggle as I can easily look to words said to me by my parents, teachers, friends, colleagues and so on that either ran in support of or in defiance of how I was envisioning who I am, who I could possibly become and how the right or wrong words said at choice times helped or hindered my own sense of self perception, acceptance, loathing and love.
We are all on this same life journey with hopes and goals, foibles and fears, successes and failures and all armed with a sense of self that may not ever align with the world, who we wish to become and who we naturally are. And still, we are connected. influence and inspire so often without ever truly knowing what we have accomplished or how much and certainly, whose lives we have touched.
Andrew McCarthy's "Brats" gently transcends its immediate subject matter as it asks of us the very same questions McCarthy asks of himself and his colleagues. It is a bittersweet experience yet one that is simultaneously enlightening as the past and present converge in order to help us all accept where we are now and where we still might travel.
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