Pops Saw a Movie: BRATS

 Actor Andrew McCarthy’s new documentary, BRATS (streaming on Hulu) spends the first fifteen minutes showing the actor merely trying to set up this film, which gives an indication of just how thin, self-indulgent, and meandering a project we’re about to endure.

McCarthy’s premise is that his career—nay, his entire life—has been negatively impacted by a 1985 article in New York Magazine by David Blum entitled, “Hollywood’s Brat Pack,” a tag the actor feels prevented him from being taken seriously by the film industry forever afterwards (never mind the fact that McCarthy is barely mentioned in the piece). Insisting that he’s “never discussed” how it felt to be part of that fraternity (a claim I find hard to believe, particularly as this movie is based on a memoir he published in 2021), McCarthy sets out to reunite with his Brat Pack brethren and discuss the term and its impact on their lives. it’s a pretty flimsy basis for a documentary, and what follows is an abject lesson in hubris, self-delusion, and petty self-pity.

From the get-go, McCarthy comes across as, well, a whiny BRAT, blaming his relative lack of success (at least the kind he desired) on everyone but himself. The fact that he gets almost no support for his thesis from the people who actually agreed to talk to him doesn’t seem to crack the facade, even if he waffles—depending upon to whom he’s talking—between hating the idea of the Brat Pack and agreeing that it was something wonderful and important of which he was lucky to be a part. The whiplash-inducing wishy-washiness would snap Charlie Brown’s neck.

While Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson wisely refused to participate, McCarthy does talk to a handful of actors who came of age with him in an era where (according to a number of interviewees) for the first time, movies were made ABOUT young people FOR young people (I guess they never heard of James Dean or the surf films of the ‘60s, and while yes, those were more about teenagers than twenty-somethings, remember the Brat Pack made a bunch of teen films as well). Emilio Estevez seems so uncomfortable having the conversation that he can’t even bring himself to move from the kitchen island and sit down. Ally Sheedy just thinks it was neat to have friends. Demi Moore seems like she never gave it much thought (she was only in one of those films, and was already a recovering alcoholic at the time). And Rob Lowe (arguably the most successful of the Brat Pack) laughs off any negative connotations to the tag, healthfully suggesting that perhaps McCarthy put things in perspective, embrace being a part of something people still remember after thirty years, and move the fuck on with his life.

Other actors who were Brat Pack-adjacent such as Lea Thompson, Timothy Hutton, and Jon Cryer (who shocks McCarthy by suggesting that Blane was not the hero of PRETTY IN PINK, which kind of shows the delusion at work in the protagonist’s psyche) try to humor their old pal Andrew, but not a one of them agrees that their lives and careers were seriously impacted by Blum’s article.

And when McCarthy talks to non-actors about the Brat Pack, they have even less time for his suppositions. Directors, producers, and writers mostly think it was a good thing because it kept the actors in the public eye and made them bankable, not to mention becoming a zeitgeist that helped to define an entire era, something most actors would kill to be able to say. Writers Susannah Gora and Ira Madison III are such fans of the era and its films that it almost feels like they think they’re in a documentary about how awesome John Hughes movies were (side note: The legacy of John Hughes is a topic I’ve looooong been meaning to tackle, maybe someday soon. Spoiler Alert: It’s not good).

Author Malcolm Gladwell, who seems more than a little bemused, tries to put the entire youth culture of the early ‘80s into a sociological context and discusses the etymology of the tag McCarthy so despises, offering, “It’s also funny, the rat pack and the brat pack in sensibility are polar opposites; One is anxious and immature and trying really, really, really hard to figure out their place in the world and the other group doesn’t give a fuck,” to which McCarthy defensively responds, “WE didn’t find it funny.”

Which is part of the problem: Andrew McCarthy doesn’t seem to find ANYTHING funny, his hyper-seriousness throughout the film displays not just a lack of perspective, but a complete dearth of a sense of humor. McCarthy goes so far as to repeatedly ask, “Where were you the first time you heard the term, ‘Brat Pack?’” as if it were a cultural moment as traumatic and consequential as the Kennedy assassination (for the record, nobody remembered).

The dramatic climax of the movie is a confrontation with the man who coined the term in the first place, journalist David Blum. Sadly, Blum comes off as narcissistic and delusional as McCarthy, insisting that what he wrote was not just fine, objective reporting, but was an act of youthful rebellion as important and era-defining as the Brat Pack itself. The two alternately spar and express affection for each other, contradicting themselves constantly trying to justify their respective takes on the article and its legacy. It’s ultimately a pointless conversation, much like the rest of the movie. Hell, the movie even ends with a phone call from Judd Nelson that allows McCarthy to finish with a tonally-bizarre and pandering clip of Bender’s climactic fist pump from THE BREAKFAST CLUB.

Ultimately, BRATS is… well, it’s sad. For McCarthy, anyway. You get the feeling that, despite claiming to have gained perspective and peace with this albatross he’s been wearing around his neck for four decades, he exits the film as desperate for the recognition he felt was so cruelly denied him as he was at the beginning (even comparing his experience to Al Pacino’s lifelong reluctance to be defined by THE GODFATHER). But not for one second of the film does Andrew McCarthy entertain the notion that maybe, just maybe he was held back by a lack of… talent? Or charisma? Perhaps both? Maybe?

But aside from being sad, this movie is also pretty fucking infuriating. Poor, poor Andrew McCarthy! Weep for the actor who’s been working pretty much constantly since he entered show business over four decades ago! Pity him!! For he has received neither the career trajectory nor the accolades he feels he deserved! Love him!!! As he is surely the victim of a cruel and heartless industry that, um, paid him more money than any of us will make in a lifetime and made him famous and allowed him the freedom to make this kind of absolutely repugnant narcissistic waste of 92 minutes that I could've spent wallowing in my OWN feelings of inadequacy and regret! 

Also, Blane was NOT the hero of PRETTY IN PINK. He was a major appliance.