Review of St. Elmo's Fire (1985) by Pete L — 13 Oct 2014

Note: This is my first review in a long time so I may be a bit rusty. I will probably rewrite this in the future when I'm back on track with my reviews.

"I always thought we'd be friends forever.".

"Yeah, well forever got a lot shorter all of a sudden.".

Easily the worst "Brat Pack" film. It centers on such awful characters that you'll secretly be wishing most of them would die in the fire mentioned in the title.

Premise: Seven friends having recently graduated from college struggle with the transition into adulthood and the responsibilities it forces upon each of them.

Directed by Joel Schumacher (The Lost Boys, Batman Forever, Batman & Robin, A Time to Kill, Phone Booth, The Phantom of the Opera) and written by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander (Saved by the Bell: The New Class), St. Elmo's Fire isn't downright terrible but it comes very close. Keep in mind this is the same Schumacher who gave us Batman- rubber suit-nipples. As the film goes on it totally makes sense. Like his Batman films, this suffers from many unintentionally ridiculous moments. Also like those movies the film is filled with problems that could have been easily avoided. One of my biggest issues with this movie is that it feels like it's missing its entire first act. From the get-go we're dropped into these characters' lives without them being properly introduced save for a brief slow-motion shot of the group walking toward the camera in their graduation gowns. The majority of the character background information is though other characters spouting off line after line of exposition. It fails at one of the first rules of script writing; Show, don't tell. It's fine if you do it in small doses but when the first fifteen or so minutes of your movie is solely that, you might wanna do a revision. Speaking of revisions, the script feels like it is nothing more than a first draft. A few revisions would have done wonders.

Plot points just randomly pop up without being introduced. It's extremely contrived. For example Kevin's (Andrew McCarthy) supposed homosexuality again just pops up out of the blue. Nothing indicates that he is until Leslie brings it up saying it's obvious that Kevin is in love with Alec. Um, no it isn't. This is roughly ten to fifteen minutes into the film and there already have been a few scenes with Alec and Kevin together. Not once did Kevin act any differently around him than he did around the other male characters. Another example is when Wendy (Mare Winningham) and Leslie (Ally Sheedy) confront Jules (Demi Moore) about her having an affair with her boss just comes up out of the blue. We've never heard about this before this point and we're already a good thirty minutes in. But possibly the biggest scene where this issue is so obvious is the scene where Lowe's character Billy gets into a fight with a guy who's hooking up with his wife. It comes out of nowhere. We haven't been introduced to this supposed wife before this scene save for her briefly being mentioned so it has zero impact. Adding insult to injury, the "wife" instantly forgives Billy after the fight and ditches the other guy even when Billy himself was clearly the instigator. Again, here's where a little polishing of the script would have been nice.

And now I get to my biggest issue with the film; the characters. These people are so awful. They're self-centered, egotistical assholes. I had no sympathy for most if not all of them. The only people who could possibly identify with these characters are the 1%. This movie would have been better titled "White People Problems". The word "yuppie" has been thrown around to describe these characters and I feel the word perfectly does. Just when you think you can't hate these characters any more they go and do something else completely moronic and then wonder why it didn't work out for them. A huge example of this is how Alec (Nelson) constantly cheats on Leslie because she won't marry him. Where's the logic in that?! And she's the one at fault here? I envy you if you can sit through this entire movie without spending half of it yelling at the screen. The thing is there's usually barely any consequence for the actions of these spoiled brats and if there is, the movie tries to make you feel sorry for them. They're complete idiots and they're rewarded for it in the end. Kirby (Estevez) is another character that bothered me. He is clearly a stalker. He's clearly stalking Dale (MacDowell) and she seems perfectly OK with it. The scenes involving this aspect feel like they belong in a horror film rather than a coming-of-age drama and come off downright creepy. I really do see this character doing something far more drastic and ending up in jail in the future. Then there's Demi Moore's character Jules. The character is so stereotypically and poorly written that I can sum her up in three words: spoiled daddy's girl. That's it. That's all there is to her. Her running joke about her "step monster" is only mildly funny the first time and is just plain annoying the other twenty of so times it's mentioned. The final character that I'm going to bring up is Rob Lowe's character Billy. Now I'm going to cut his character a little slack because his character actually learns something in the end and is actually a better person for it. Still he's not getting off clean with me. As with nearly every group there's a bad boy and in this case that's Billy. I personally think Lowe and Nelson should have switched roles, but I'll admit that Lowe does give the character a certain charm. Still this character makes all of the other characters look like saints. But since he's a character in this movie, he gets off scot-free for his actions for the most part. However there is one scene towards the end that seems totally out of character for him. The scene itself is mildly disturbing and doesn't fit in with the film. It is scenes like this that bring the film down.

I didn't absolutely hate this movie though. There are some aspects of that are done well. For instance the acting is fantastic. If you're a fan of any of these actors I recommend watching this for their performances. While Lowe did win a Razzie award for his performance as Billy, I didn't think he did too bad. I was very impressed at how earlier that year Estevez, Nelson, and Sheedy played high school students in The Breakfast Club then played college students in this. They were very convincing in both cases. There are some good moments to be had if they aren't completely ruined in the very next scene. The ending is the best part of the movie, not only because it's finally over but because it's the most well written scene in the entire movie. All loose ends are wrapped up pretty well. The soundtrack isn't too bad as well. All in the movie isn't completely awful but it isn't anywhere near good. Score: 4.5/10.