Andrew McCarthy's 'Brats' Review: What if You Held a Reckoning and No One Showed Up?

What I wanted from Hulu’s Brat Pack documentary was The Big Chill—a nostalgic reunion of old friends reminiscing about their glory days. What I got was an hour and a half of Andrew McCarthy grappling with the realization that he allowed one New York Magazine article to define his entire life and stunt his professional growth.

The Brat Pack, the ubiquitous group of young actors who dominated the film scene in the mid-’80s, typically includes Andrew McCarthy, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore, and Molly Ringwald. Membership is debatable, and the documentary features interviews with a few “Brat Pack Adjacent” actors who flirted with being associated with the group, such as Jon Cryer and Lea Thompson (who is married to Howard Deutch, the director of Pretty In Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful). McCarthy attempted to interview the core members, but most declined. After all, none of them have seen or spoken to each other in three decades.

McCarthy remains bitter and resentful about how Dave Blum’s New York Magazine article labeled this cohort of actors and portrayed them as unserious about their craft. Emilio Estevez, who shares McCarthy’s sentiment, displays visible distaste during his interview. He is reluctant to discuss the topic and essentially admits as much. Judd Nelson and Molly Ringwald refused to participate in the film, indicating that Estevez isn’t alone in his desire to leave that part of his life behind. The Brat Pack members McCarthy did interview have a much healthier perspective on how the label impacted them and their careers. They are too polite to explicitly tell McCarthy to move on, but that’s the underlying message.

Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, whose careers and personal lives have soared beyond their “bratty” beginnings, provided the most insightful interviews. While they don’t fully embrace the Brat Pack label, they don’t reject it either. Lowe feels fortunate to have been part of this talented group of actors and filmmakers who ushered in the era of youth-focused cinema that continues to dominate. Moore, who filmed St. Elmo’s Fire with an assigned sober companion, approached the impact of that period on her life with a philosophical outlook. During their conversations, she and Lowe encourage McCarthy to reframe his perspective on the entire experience. They possess a sense of gratitude for that launching point in their careers that McCarthy seemingly lacks, perhaps because he entered Hollywood considering himself a serious, theater school actor whose career never lived up to his expectations.

The directors and producers McCarthy interviews for Brats also view the infamous label as a net positive for all involved. There’s a lot of verbal consolation, and by the end of the film, you can’t help but think it would have been more enjoyable for everyone if McCarthy had sought therapy to work through these issues and then simply thrown a party for his old friends to reconnect and filmed that instead. At one point, McCarthy stops himself mid-sentence, as if he too has arrived at this realization.

I enjoyed Brats because the soundtrack is killer and The Brat Pack is my Roman Empire. Thirty-plus years later, the movies still resonate because they present teens as fully realized human beings with complex internal lives. As a writer, you dream about that kind of longevity and influence on the social landscape. But Brats is a pretty dull 90 minutes. Most of it is McCarthy navel-gazing and getting lost trying to find people’s houses. If you’re looking for fireworks or tales of ’80s excess and debauchery you’ll need to look elsewhere.