If you were like me and between the ages 13 and 24 in the mid-1980s, then you were fortunate enough to witness Hollywood making the huge transition to youth-oriented movies, led by producer John Hughes with such hits as THE BREAKFAST CLUB, PRETTY IN PINK, SIXTEEN CANDLES, and the list goes on.
A group of young, pretty, talented actors starred in these movies and enjoyed great success at a young age. They included Rob Lowe, Molly Ringwald, Emilio Esteves, Ally Sheedy, and of course, Andrew McCarthy.
Then, in 1985, David Blum, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, while doing an article on Emilio that expanded to include his young cohorts, blew it all up by calling them The Brat Pack – a riff on The Rat Pack of the 1950s, populated by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Junior.
Andrew McCarthy, now in his 60s, decided to re-visit his ‘Brat Pack’ friends, seeking some sort of therapy and even closure for what was, for him, a personal and professional trauma regarding being associated with the Brat Pack.
While this documentary proves sweet and nostalgic, there are no revelations. None of them were close friends, thereby debunking the idea of a ‘Pack’ – in fact, time and again, Andrew, as he meets the other members, consistently mentioned how he has not seen them in 35 years!
Also, a number of key members, like Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, and Judd Nelson, are not included, not because Andrew did not try, but probably because they had no desire to re-visit the past, which is telling about this premise in itself.
While sweet and nostalgic, BRATS offers no revelations about the once-famous Brat Pack.
BRATS is now available on HULU.
