Team Bear Watch: St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

Watched:  05/23/2024

Format:  Paramount+

Viewing:  First

Director:  Joel Schumacher

Selection:  Household Joint Decision

Birth of a Nation.  The Jazz Singer.  Porky's.

All movies that captivated a nation at one point or another for a variety of reasons.  But, also, proof that, no matter their popularity in the moment, not every movie holds up over time.  

I had never seen St. Elmo's Fire (1985).  I was ten when it came out, so too young and not interested.  We only sporadically had premium cable during the era when I suspect a lot of my peers watched the movie.  But over the years, I had seen no particular reason to watch this film.  For a movie that was often mentioned as of a certain place and time - usually in talking about "The Brat Pack", it was never referenced textually or subtextually; ie: no one was suggesting that one should see this movie to be culturally literate - but there often seemed to be a belief that everyone *had* seen it.

However, St. Elmo's Fire co-star and 80's heart-throb Andrew McCarthy's documentary Brat is set to land on Hulu.  The film promises to cover the phenomenon of the Brat Pack from the inside, talking with the folks who were tagged in a notorious New York Magazine article "Hollywood's Brat Pack" by David Blum.  

But the thing is, I'm just young enough that a lot of the Brat Pack stuff didn't hit me.  I think they're mostly elder Gen-X, but in 1985, I was concerned with soccer practice and robots, not dealing with my friend's personal problems as they flexed to grow into adulthood.  So this movie was *not for me*.  Nor were a lot of the movies made by the Brat Pack in the general time of their release.  And as I'm sure the doc will cover, the Brat Pack stigma deeply impacted those actors as it made them a brand, a brand that spoiled as we hit 1990, when maybe I would have been interested in young Hollywood (which I never really was).*

The movie is most famous, really, for the cast of then-young stars, more than anything.  It was like an Avengers of former Tiger Beat features pushing into more adult territory.

So that's a lot of pre-amble.  But I want to set the table, because this movie is a product of its time in so, so many ways.  And when The Youths are in shock that men acting shitty was super-normalized, I now have a movie to point them to as evidence of what was considered stuff for charming heart throbs to do on screen that now seems like a how-to for winding up as the bad guy in someone's lengthy Threads post.

But, it's not just the men behaving badly - bear witness to at least one of our female leads acting like a piece of shit, and two of them being doormats.  (late edit:  at least the characters in the movie seem to have a pretty standard-issue 1980's Woody Allen obsession, and I think it's time we start tracking how much movies that want to elevate Woody Allen also have a misogynistic bent even as they lean into pretentiousness).

The basic set-up finds seven college "friends", now about half a year out from graduation from prestigious, expensive Georgetown University in the Washington DC area, where they have all remained.  I will describe each plot thread in the best terms I can.

1. Rob Lowe is an alcoholic who destroys his friends' cars, gets jobs from them he gets fired from, is married to the girl from Near Dark with whom he has a baby, but he is sleeping his way through every available woman in town.  I think he's trying to be a sax player in rock bands, which is an amazing idea that will translate well into popular music by 1990.
2. Mare Winningham plays a social worker who lives with her millionaire parents and is under the impression she's in love with Rob Lowe - and so let's him exploit her wealth and good graces (and, eventually, her body in a scene that is supposed to be sweet and has "ick" written all over it)
3. Demi Moore plays a coked up maniac who has terrible crimped hair, is already tens of thousands in-debt right out of school, and is keeping an eye on a former step-mother who is dying off-screen.  She brings nothing to the party.  She is not a character, she's a list of problems.
4. Judd Nelson plays a career-driven political aide with no real party loyalty, just ambition.  And, for reasons that are unclear, wants to immediately marry his college sweetheart.  But he's also secretly bedding retail employees.  We're told everyone likes him, but there is no evidence that this is true.
5. Ally Sheedy has a mom haircut and is maybe an artist?  Her major role is not being ready to get married to Judd Nelson.  
6. Andrew McCarthy plays the writer who claims he hates love, so you know he's nursing a wounded heart.  The movie wants to trick you into thinking he's gay, but telegraphs like crazy that he wants Ally Sheedy and her mom hair.  He wants to write something meaningful in the paper, and, spoilers again, literally publishes something called "The Meaning of Life" in a major newspaper.  Friends, I died.
7. Last but certainly not least  - Emilio Estevez plays a freak who stalks Andie MacDowall who he went on a date with once like 5 years prior.  He basically spends the movie terrorizing Andie MacDowall, who is indifferent when she isn't sending clear messages she's not interested.  It's a horror movie played for laughs.

The movie is told in sort of short vignettes, showing the progress of time as the former college kids are still hanging out at their favorite college bar.  We see these people who spend an inordinate amount of time hanging out in a variety of constellations.  But not one of these people has the ability to know or understand what's going on with the other.  Everything has to be shown, told or made a revelation to them.  

What's wildest about this movie is how *bad* the writing is.  Not one of the characters is interesting or seems to have a thought in their head - which is kind of a surprise for Georgetown alumni.  The framework feels more like a sitcom than the drama they think they're making with characters bouncing off each other, having catch phrases, and absorbed in problems they keep restating in concrete terms - and the problems are boring as fuck.  It's like being stuck on a plane for 2 hours listening to two people talk about their friends.  

But I'll say "friends" because, again, these people almost don't seem to know each other, they have such a hard time figuring out something is going on with their "friends".  And if they do address the issue, until the third act, they just laugh it off.  Example:  The movie opens on them all assembling at the hospital because they think Rob Lowe and Mare Widdingham have been in a terrible car accident because Lowe was driving drunk.  No one suggests that this is troubling.  Instead they.... go drinking.

The men more or less uniformly treat their female friends as less-than and objects to be obtained.  And I frankly don't have the energy to go into how all four of the men are awful to the women.  Or how Emilio Estevez does untold damage to himself positively stalking Andie MacDowall who responds with "wow, am I flattered!" when she should have been calling the cops.  And it's unclear why we have a sub plot about Andrew McCarthy and a prostitute, but it sure seems like it's rolling out that old chestnut about how wives and girlfriends are also getting paid for sex, so it's no different, and then does nothing to dispel the idea.  Which...  sigh.

But, yes, the movie basically sees women as land that can be claimed in the name of Spain.

It's not hard to see how, in the wake of The Big Chill, a movie about a group of friends on the precipice of change and dealing with "life" seemed possible, and possibly easy.  And I can't account for how that movie is a slam dunk and this one is a long, sad fart.  But we've all seen post Star Wars sci-fi movies that didn't quite work, so apply that logic.

When you try to make a movie that's entirely character driven, maybe not make all of the characters are horrible, two-dimensional shit heels and cardboard cut outs.

What's weirdest is:  all of these actors are fine to good.  And you'd never know it from this movie.  The dialog sucks, the direction they're given maybe matches the dialog, but their utter indifference to each other and everyone around them makes them all seem like psychopaths.  

So what happened?  Is Schumacher the very bad director I've accused him of being from time to time?  

I mean, he also co-wrote this masterpiece, so.  

Sadly, the movie is not called St. Elmo's Fire because all of these people die in a fire in their favorite bar.   As the movie nears its horrendously long-in-coming conclusion, a semi-reformed Rob Lowe comforts Demi Moore, who has lost her job, is deeply in debt and full of cocaine.  He informs her "all of these problems aren't real, they're like the illusion of St. Elmo's Fire".  I think, anyway, that's what he's saying.  But the problem is - no.  Demi Moore is hooked on cocaine.  Her credit is completely fucked and she's 22-23.  She has no professional references after getting fired after banging her boss.  She's likely about to get evicted.  And her step-mom is still dying and saddling her with the bill.  And I guess her dad hates her?

Like, it must be nice to feel like those aren't real problems, but this is coming from a guy who will soon bang the virgin infatuated with him before skipping town, ditching his own child and giving up on marriage because it got in the way of fucking other women and doing drugs.

Amazing.  It sometimes feels like the movie was made on a dare.

And, yet, sometimes you can almost see what they thought they were doing, if you squint real hard.  Like, there's a germ of an idea here.  I like that it just kind of flows over time and we have these characters with their own arcs.  It would be nice to have one or two of these that are good every generation.  I'm not sure latter-era Gen-X got one.  The closes I could think of was Reality Bites, and that's depressing.  But so is this.

Anyway, it was the worst movie I saw this year to date, and I'll need to let it sit with me for a while, because it's like to wind up on my Top 10 Worst Studio Movies list.   

*Ringwald aside, as I was not averse to the nation-wide crush we shared.  I'll be very curious to see how and if Ringwald participates, as I think she's on the young end of the BP grouping, and she kind of fled for Europe by the early 1990s.