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One of the most recent installments of this documentary biography style series focused on The Brat Pack, the teen stars of the '80s made famous in various John Hughes movies as well as others.
I was so
excited to see this show because I LOVED all these movies growing up.
I must have seen The
Breakfast Club at least 50 times. My cousin had taped it off HBO
(so it was the unedited version!) and we watched it over and over until
we had literally memorized all the dialogue. My best friend was completely
in love with Rob
Lowe, so we had seen St.
Elmo's Fire many, many times as well. I was excited to relive the
past, feel the nostalgia and find out whatever happened to all of them.
This show
did not really deliver. Let me get the good stuff out of the way first.
The structure of the show worked well. Rather than following one person
from beginning to end, then going back and showing another person's
life, the show went year by year and updated you on what each member
of the Brat Pack was doing that year. This enabled them to add in some
commentary about what was going on in the industry and world at that
time and provided added insight into why things happened.
Also, E!
devoted two hours to this topic, which I think was necessary. I can't
imagine exploring the topic in only an hour minus commercials. They
focused on 8 members of the Brat Pack, so that gives about 15 minutes
for each actor.
And that's
about it for the good things. Now on to the bad:
First,
I had some issues with the fact that they decided to focus exclusively
on the following eight actors: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall,
Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson
and Demi Moore. While they are certainly the core members of the Brat
Pack, they could have at least mentioned some of the other big players
of the day. How about Matthew Broderick? John Cusack? Mary Stuart Masterson?
Lea Thompson? All of these actors were contemporaries of the ones mentioned,
and yet according to this show, they never existed. I understand that
they had time constraints, but a mention would have been nice. The show's
criteria for members of the Brat Pack was "starred in The Breakfast
Club or St. Elmo's Fire" - any other movies apparently didn't count.
Second,
the friends and witnesses they interviewed were hardly insiders. One
of their key "experts" to give us insight into the behavior
of the actors and the phenomena was the
guy who played the janitor in The Breakfast Club! Hello? This guy
was in the movie for all of 5 minutes, and suddenly he's an expert into
why Emilio Estevez and Demi Moore broke up? Their second key expert
was a guy who wrote a quickie bio on Molly Ringwald that is out of print.
This guy was suddenly an expert on why Rob Lowe taped himself having
sex, and what Demi Moore's motives were in marrying Bruce Willis. I
kept expecting them to interview Andrew McCarthy's mailman or Anthony
Michael Hall's chiropractor. Obviously, they would have insights to
share.
Third,
they ignored aspects of each actor's career in order to support their
theories. Molly
Ringwald was a Hollywood outcast until her series "Townies".
This conveniently forgot that fact that she starred in Stephen King's
The Stand two years earlier. "Fine," I thought, "they
forgot about The Stand. No biggie". Not two minutes later, they
bring up the fact that Rob Lowe received favorable critical attention
in The
Stand for his portrayal of a deaf-mute. This is just one example
where the filmmakers would make an assertion and I would yell at the
TV, "What about this movie? What about this one?"
Another
example would be their assertion that after The Breakfast Club, Anthony
Michael Hall's career tanked. Hello, Weird
Science anyone? I seem to remember that being a fairly popular movie.
I realize
that some of these issues were a matter of lack of time to fully explore
each actor's career, or to include more actors. The problem with this
theory is my final complaint. Each time the show went to or came back
from commercial, there was a segment that lasted at least a minute showing
pictures from various movies, and repeating the bit just before the
commercial, in case you fell asleep or something. These useless bumpers
took up at least 12 minutes of time, which could have been put to much
better use. Also, each time they talked about a movie, they showed an
extended scene. And I mean extended - during the clip from St. Elmo's
Fire, I felt like I watched the whole movie. These clips could also
have been cut to make more room for useful information.
All in
all, good idea, bad execution. It may be that the actors and their friends
and families refused to cooperate, and thus limited the amount of interviews
being done. This does not excuse sloppy research though. I give it a
3 out of 10. |