St Elmo's Fire (1985)
A glossy, vacuous offering from director John Schumacher (who
also wrote the screenplay, with Carl Kurlander), St Elmo's Fire
was a group drama that followed the comings and goings of a batch
of graduates from Georgetown University.
The film served only one purpose - To showcase some of the
up-and-coming young stars of the Brat Pack.
It starred Emilio Estevez as a law student in love with Jenny
Wright, Rob Lowe as a no-good loser rock musician (who wears an
earring) married to a girl he made pregnant but doesn't love,
Judd Nelson as a social-climbing philanderer who works for a
senator on Capitol Hill and who's having a relationship with
painter girlfriend-roommate Ally Sheedy, Mare Winningham as a
social worker virgin burdened with over-bearing parents (she's the
daughter of a rich greeting-card tycoon) and in love with Lowe,
Demi Moore as a cocaine-snorting high flyer who is attracted to
gang rapes and suicide attempts, and Andrew McCarthy as a single,
unattached obituary writer who hankers for bigger and better
things.
Their individual stories were inter-cut in annoying fragments
to little purpose thanks to the feebleness of both script and
direction. However the film found its audience and grossed $37.8
million at the box office.
The movie is exhausting and pointless. Struggling vainly to
jazz up a wooden film that stubbornly refuses to come to life,
these seven "Brat Pack" members make lively, heroic
paramedics, but their patient was dead on arrival.
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