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St. Elmo's Fire (1985)

Rate: 3
Viewed: 10/07, 6/20

StElmo
10/07: Calling the Guinness Book of Records, we have a winner here: St. Elmo's Fire for the film with the most unlikable characters.

Let me reiterate that: it's about seven worthless recent college graduates with useless problems. Every time something goes wrong, my answer has been uniformly the same: "Like I care." Funnily, why don't I see black people except for one who happens to be a hooker?

Predictions are easy to make when it comes to what will happen to each character. Kevin Dolenz (Andrew McCarthy) will turn into a fragile hermit, ultimately finding no meaning in his life. Alec Newbury (Judd Nelson) will be caught having sex with a male page in the bathroom stall and thus be forced out of politics. His ex, Leslie Hunter (Ally Sheedy), will turn out fine with family and kids.

Jules (Demi Moore) will kill herself by overdosing on barbiturates before she's 25 while Dale Biberman (Andie MacDowell) will have the best life by traveling around the world as doctor's wife. As soon as Kirby Keager (Emilio Estevez), failing at everything in life, finds out about it, he'll go berserk one day over a broken pencil and be locked up in an insane asylum.

Billy Hicks (Rob Lowe) will become an alcoholic with severe hair loss and get arrested for statutory rape. Oh, right...it did happen to the actor in 1988, forcing him to check into rehab soon thereafter for sex, alcohol, and drug addictions. Wendy Beamish (Mare Willingham) gets the shock of her life by finding out that she tested positive for at least seven different types of STDs because of her one-night stand with Billy.

All in all, why is the film called St. Elmo's Fire if nobody hangs out that much over there?

6/20: The worst and cheesiest The Big Chill picture of the 80's goes to *drum roll* St. Elmo's Fire.

Remember they were called "The Brat Pack"? Make that "The Untalented Pack." Okay, I'll let Rob Lowe, who was 19 at that time, off the hook because he did have some talent. But the rest? Nah, forget it. Like James Spader in Pretty in Pink, Andie MacDowell was too good for everybody and went on to do better films.

The trouble with St. Elmo's Fire is that it's a shallow movie about superficial, corny, and overprivileged whitebread characters. Let's not kid ourselves: they graduated from Georgetown University (which strongly disapproved the film, so they shot it on location at the University of Maryland's College Park campus) yet didn't know how to get their shit together? To come to think of it, Reality Bites does look better in comparison.

All in all, instead of aging well like fine wine, St. Elmo's Fire is like a can of stale coca-cola that's thirty years past its expiration date.