All the Brat-Pack films? Well, here’s a start

In other lands, film fans might argue about auteurs or noir or such.
But in the U.S., we have a bigger issue – defining which ones are the “Brat Pack” movies. That came up now, as Hulu:
— Released the “Brats” documentary. Andrew McCarthy visited colleagues who – almost 40 years ago – were tarnished by that “Brat Pack” tag.
— Then sent an announcement, for which a third-party source attached this headline: “All nine Brat Pack films are now streaming on Hulu.”
There are only nine? For a while, it seemed like there were 900.
Hulu was merely telling us it has nine “Brat Pack” or “Pack”-adjacent films to sample. It’s a decent enough collection, led by “St. Elmo’s Fire,” “Taps” (shown here with Tim Hutton) and “Ferris Bueller,” but it’s just a start.
The era began when Hollywood started putting a fresh group of young actors – many of them quite talented, most of them quite attractive – in movie after movie. It ended when a magazine article seemed to smudge them all.
The two strongest examples were the 1985 movies that came out just before and after that article. “The Breakfast Club” had Emilio Estevez, Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy and Anthony Michael Hall as teens in Saturday detention. Then “St. Elmo’s Fire” linked Estevez, Sheedy amd Nelson with others – Rob Lowe, Demi Moore, Mare Winningham and McCarthy – as young college grads, reluctantly stepping into real life.
Both films made strong attempts to provide depth and complexity. Any “Brat Pack” experience needs both; Hulu has one.
It’s also missing Ringwald’s “Sixteen Candles” (with Hall) and “Pretty in Pink” (with McCarthy) and others – including “The Outsiders.”
Now “Outsiders” is known mostly on Broadway, as the Tony-winner for best musical. But in 1983, Francis Coppola (really) directed a richly emotional movie that included Lowe and Estevez, plus Tom Cruise, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Diane Lane, Ralph Macchio and more.
For the full “Brat Pack” experience, you would need all of those films. Still, Hulu offers a decent start; its nine films, chronologically, are:
— “Taps” (1981). Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn lead a military-school takeover, alongside an intense Cruise.
— “St. Elmo’s Fire” (1985).
— “Weird Science” (1985). Mere silliness, with Hall as a nerd who creates a gorgeous woman in his lab.
— “About Last Night” (1986). Lowe and Moore move up a step, in an expansion of David Mamet’s play about struggling with coupledom.
— “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (1986)It’s a classic with Matthew Broderick as a teen taking a big day.
— “Blue City” (1986), a failed film with Nelson (as an angry guy avenging his father’s murder) and Sheedy.
— “Fresh Horses” (1988). McCrthy plays a rich college student who meets Ringwald, a troubled kid from the wrong side of the river.
— “Say Anything” (1989). There are no Brat-Packers here, but you don’t need any. Cameron Crowe has written and directed a smart romance, with John Cusack and Ione Skye.
— “Betsy’s Wedding” (1990). Ringwald is getting married, Sheedy is her sister, but the emphasis is more on the grown-ups, including Alan Alda (who wrote and directed) as her dad and then-newcomer Anthony LaPaglia as a loan-shark’s representative.