I have seen so many hagiographic clip reels masquerading as documentaries that I kind of just presumed that Hulu\u2019s \u201cBrats\u201d would be a similar love letter to the young stars of the \u201880s, the actors and actresses who shaped pop culture in the middle of the decade in a way that\u2019s still being felt today. I\u2019m happy to report it\u2019s not that. It\u2019s an ambitious, introspective look at how pop culture and acting careers can be shaped by reputation and even just a nickname. The words \u201cBrat Pack\u201d became something of an anchor on the careers of the people deemed in this exclusive club of beautiful, successful young stars. One of its members, Andrew McCarthy, is at a point in his life that a lot of us reach when we ask ourselves how they got here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBrats\u201d makes a convincing case that the Brat Pack itself emerged from a shift in the cinematic landscape from movies made about adults for adults to a direct targeting of a younger audience through younger stars like Tom Cruise in \u201cRisky Business\u201d and Kevin Bacon in \u201cFootloose.\u201d Riding that wave were the members of what would become known as The Brat Pack. Using the rule that a Brat Pack movie stars at least two of the core members place the first such film as 1983\u2019s \u201cThe Outsiders,\u201d but the same year\u2019s \u201cClass\u201d feels more in tune with what people remember about this group, and that\u2019s followed by the John Hughes movies like \u201cSixteen Candles\u201d and especially \u201cThe Breakfast Club.\u201d Much of \u201cBrats\u201d discusses exactly who<\/em> is in the Brat Pack \u2013 Jon Cryer definitely didn\u2019t want the label back then, and Lea Thompson is more adjacent than in the club \u2013 but the most commonly agreed upon members are McCarthy, Emilio Estevez, Anthony Michael Hall, Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Molly Ringwald, and Ally Sheedy. <\/p>\n Their lives were changed in 1985 when a journalist named David Blum started a profile for Emilio Estevez for New York Magazine<\/em>, noticing how much his subject and colleagues had a different level of popularity, coining the terms Brat Pack, which has an unbelievable origin story that Blum elucidates in a fantastic interview late in the film. Seriously, I was so happy that McCarthy got to talk to the man who shifted his entire life in a way he couldn\u2019t have possibly predicted. The discussion is excellent when it comes to the complex dynamics that can sometimes arise between journalists and stars. McCarthy really gets to the core of what \u201cBrats\u201d is about in this interview, noting how Blum essentially took control of his career with what seems like a flippant nickname. As someone says earlier in the film, Martin Scorsese wouldn\u2019t call \u201cThe Brat Pack,\u201d so the label became a stop sign for these performers, some of whom took years to shake it off, and some who arguably never did. <\/p>\n McCarthy\u2019s film consists primarily of conversations between McCarthy and former Brat Pack members like Estevez, Lowe, Sheedy, and Moore, some of whom he hasn\u2019t seen in decades. One of the most shocking elements of \u201cBrats\u201d for fans of these actors (and that era) may be how much it feels like the label broke up a band some hardcore fans would like to think is still running around a library on detention. Estevez says that a project with him and McCarthy immediately fell apart as every actor in this group fled the label to try to further their careers. Moore seems to have reached the best place about it all, putting it in a context that\u2019s downright moving regarding how much we tend to wallow in things we cannot change and how growth can only come when we stop. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have seen so many hagiographic clip reels masquerading as documentaries that I kind of just presumed that Hulu\u2019s \u201cBrats\u201d would be a similar love letter to the young stars of the \u201880s, the actors and actresses who shaped pop culture in the middle of the decade in a way that\u2019s still being felt today. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[43,52],"class_list":["post-1206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary-movies","tag-documentary","tag-hulu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/us.celebrity2000.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}