LOGLNE: The documentary “Brats” skims across the surface of 1980s popular culture to present a breezy portrait of a group of very famous young actors who came-of-age while appearing in coming-of-age films. Labelled “The Brat Pack” in a 1985 New York Magazine cover story, they appeared, in various combinations, in decade defining films like “Pretty in Pink,” “16 Candles” and “St. Elmo’s Fire.” In firsthand interviews with fellow Brat Pack members, director Andrew McCarthy looks back at the effects of youthful stardom, and being labelled a brat in the press.
CAST: Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Timothy Hutton, Demi Moore, Rob Lowe, Lea Thompson, Jon Cryer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Howard Deutch, David Blum, and in archival footage, Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson.
REVIEW: There’s an old saying that sums up McCarthy’s approach to “Brats”: “Within every challenge lies the hidden treasure of self-discovery.”
As director and host, he spends a great deal of the film, pushing the idea that being labeled, at a young age, the Brat Pack, has been limiting to the careers of all the actors involved. Directors, producers and studios, he asserts, didn’t take them seriously and wouldn’t hire them to appear in anything other than films aimed at teenagers.
For McCarthy, at the film’s onset at least, the premise appears to be an existential crisis. The subsequent interviews, with various pop culture experts like Malcolm Gladwell, and McCarthy’s fellow Brat Packers, feel like therapy for the actor; a way to understand his complicated relationship with a cultural moment that had a profound personal impact on his life.
For the most part, the interviews are interesting. Rob Lowe (who reminds McCarthy that they had a pretty good time at the height of Brat Mania) and Demi Moore (who uses words like “againstness” in her passionate replies of McCarthy’s questions) are the stand-outs, but all the conversations have a warmth born out of old friends reminiscing about a shared experience. There’s also a heaping helping of nostalgia—loads of great 80s hair, fashions and film clips—but the strongest whiff of wistfulness comes from McCarthy himself and his conflicted feelings regarding how his career intersected with the public and professional opinion of the Brat Pack.
“Brats” does become repetitive as McCarthy rehashes the same point over-and-over again but beyond the film’s self-indulgence comes a hidden treasure of self-discovery. I don’t know if McCarthy will ever truly accept how his life was shaped by his Brat Pack association, but by the time the end credits roll, he at least seems to realize that the advantages of being a Brat Packer far outshone the burden.
Emilio Estevez became a Brat Pack star hanging around in a library in 1985’s “The Breakfast Club.” Years later he returns, this time as a grown up with grown up concerns. As writer-director-producer-star of “The Public” Estevez presents the socially aware story of what happens when people stand up for themselves and speak truth to power.
“The Public” sees Estevez play Stuart Goodson, head librarian and de facto social worker at the Cincinnati Public Library. Inside the library is an oasis of warmth for the city’s homeless community who use it as a drop in centre during the cold winter months. Outside, when the frigid weather claims one of the library regulars, the patrons, led by Jackson (Michael K. Williams), turn the building into an emergency homeless shelter. “There’s some situation at the central library,” says Detective Bill Ramstead (Alec Baldwin). “Probably somebody had a melt down over an overdue book.”
Behind the scenes the stand-off escalates as the sensationalist media, in the form of a TV news reporter played by Gabrielle Union, misrepresents the act of civil disobedience as a possible hostage situation or active shooter. A self-righteous mayoral candidate (Christian Slater) stokes the fire while library administrator Anderson (Jeffrey Wright) tries to keep the situation from boiling over. “Wat’s the downside to having them stay there for the evening,” he asks.
“The Public” takes a long hard look at pressing social concerns. Estevez based part of this story on a Chip Ward essay about public libraries as asylums for the homeless and drives home the point with all the subtlety of one of Cincinnati’s icy winters. Lack of shelter space for the homeless population coupled with governmental cutbacks to social programs are urgent needs brought to life here in a colorful if somewhat cliched way.
The idea that, as Anderson says, public libraries are the last bastion of democracy, truly a place for everyone and anyone, is an important one but delivered with a heavy hand. By the time Goodson reads a long excerpt from “The Grapes of Wrath” to a reporter the noble efforts of the screenplay give way to the stagier aspects of Estevez’s vision.
“The Public” features good performances from Slater, Baldwin, Estevez and Taylor Schilling as a flirtatious building manager but is weighted down by the burden of its good intentions.
Bobby is an ambitious attempt to reenact the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968. Director Emilio Estevez has assembled a extensive ensemble cast, featuring vets like William H. Macy, Harry Belefonte and Anthony Hopkins to Brat Packers like Christian Slater and Demi Moore to hot young stars such as Lindsay Lohan and Elijah Wood to up and comers like Shia LaBeouf and Joshua Jackson who play people who were in the hotel the night Kennedy was killed.
Estevez, who wrote and directed Bobby, was only six years old when Kennedy was assassinated so it might be his lack of personal experience with the era that gives Bobby it almost hopelessly earnest tone. The late 60s were a politically charged time, fuelled by protests, assassinations and civil unrest, but Estevez’s account of the time is simplistic, with stock characters—the racist kitchen manager, the wise old doorman—spouting dialogue that sounds as though it was written for a history textbook and not a feature film.
When Lohan’s character says, “If marrying you tonight keeps you from going to Vietnam, then it’s worth it,” before she walks down the aisle with a recently drafted Elijah Wood, it’s difficult not to imagine even a Harlequin romance writer cringing at the clichéd line.
With 22 characters Bobby is too populated by half. Many of the stories are superfluous and don’t add anything to the film except star power and running time. It’s a snapshot of the time that needs some serious cropping.
Despite the needlessly sprawling story, it’s hard to really dislike a movie this earnest, a film that wears its heart on its sleeve. While cinematic greatness might not be evident, Bobby’s message of peace and justice shines through.