From the Rental Vault: St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

I have a small soft spot of nostalgia for Joel Schumacher's "Brat Pack" outing, the ensemble picture St. Elmo's Fire. Following on the heels of the Baby Boomer's The Big Chill in 1983 and the high school introspection from earlier in 1985, The Breakfast Club, Fire seemed like it was the movie talking about people closer to my age at the time (The irony there being that stars Emilio Estevez, Judd Nelson and Ally Sheedy played in both Breakfast Club and Fire, aging some four or five years in the span of four months). The seven friends shown in the movie have just graduated college and are starting out in the workforce and adult life, with varying degrees of success.

But real life, it turns out, is complicated, and the safety net provided by the college environment is nowhere to be found out in that world. Party man Billy (Rob Lowe) finds that no one hires for those skills, which is even worse when you are married with a child. Alec (Nelson) and Leslie (Sheedy) see that living together may not be just a step along the path to marriage -- especially when Alec has a somewhat different understanding of monogamy -- and Kevin (Andrew McCarthy) discovers that just because your longtime crush breaks up with her longtime beau doesn't mean she wants to start something with you. Kirby (Estevez) will come to know that there are some good questions to ask the fair maid you've worshiped from afar, like "Do you have a boyfriend already?" Jules (Demi Moore) will learn that an affair with your married boss will not give you job security and that credit card debt is not an ideal fiscal foundation. Wendy (Mare Winningham) seems to discover that asserting yourself and creating your own life can involve finally consummating a relationship with the bad boy she's always fantasized about, but since he's planning on moving away and the movie ends right afterwards, it's kind of hard to say that's any sort of progress.

The script, by Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, is not really any kind of straight narrative as much as a series of snapshot vignettes. But the way the characters interact in those vignettes suggests there is supposed to be some kind of story arc, which means Schumacher and Kurlander's script is just not any good at pulling it off. The two or three crisis moments that are supposed to set up a resolution ring false, and the real problem is that with one or two exceptions, the whole group is a bunch of jerks. The major life lessons that they are supposed to acquire come with a healthy helping of "Duh, you idiot," and the talented cast has so little to work with it's tough to feel good for them when they finally take their Big Step Forward into Grown-Up Life. Especially since for several of them Grown-Up Life seems to still be pretty solidly adolescent.

As I said, I have a couple of nostalgic soft spots for Fire. In addition to remembering it "finally" as a movie about folks in my own age and experience bracket, I resonated a little with McCarthy's character, a fledgling reporter dealing with an unrequited crush on one of his best friends (Although Schumacher and Kurlander's breakthrough event for him was pure fantasy -- the Washington Post is not going to give column inches to a 22-year old to write a piece called "The Meaning of Life").

But it's a lousy movie from stem to stern, nostalgia notwithstanding. Had it not come out only four months after The Breakfast Club it would have been seen as a clear attempt to capitalize on that movie's success, but the truth is that ensemble coming-of-age stories are not uncommon. It's just that Schumacher and Kurlander are nowhere near as talented as Lawrence Kasdan (Chill) and John Hughes (Club). Columbia Studio execs may have thought they were getting a younger version of their Big Chill smash, but they would up with a clumsy mess that is far better remembered from across a span of years than watched in real time.