St. Elmo’s Fire is one of those movies I never had the slightest interest in seeing. I’m not even sure why. I was only 10 years old when it debuted but I never rented it later, something I was prone to do with films made for an older demographic at release time. Maybe it was because I couldn’t easily discern the plot of the film from its previews, or maybe I could discern just enough to inform me it was about a tight-knit friend group in college and I couldn’t relate to either of those things. I’ve never belonged to a clique nor did I go to a university. It’s not that I need to relate to a film’s plot or characters in order to be intrigued (what the fuck do I have in common with Indiana Jones besides hating Nazis?), but if the entire premise revolves around the drama of real-life young adult relationships then I guess I need a little more than just “college” and “friend group”.
I finally watched it a few nights ago for one reason: Gen-Xers took to social media with their fiery opinions about St. Elmo’s Fire after watching the new Andrew McCarthy documentary aptly titled Brats (which also inspired some fiery opinions). Everyone’s feelings about the 1985 film generally fall into two camps: “I loved it” and “Fuck that movie”.
You might be surprised to know every single actor here is technically a Boomer, with Lowe being the youngest
If you’d asked me what 1980’s movie is the most polarizing I would’ve guessed The Gods Must Be Crazy, or Revenge of the Nerds, or even Return of the Jedi. But St. Elmo’s Fire beats those 3 by a long shot. And now I know why.
First, I must get out of the way that I haven’t watched Brats yet. I didn’t want what the stars have to say about SEF now to color how I viewed the film, but I’ll eventually get around to it.
Halfway through the movie, the first thing that stood out to me was how it meandered, intentionally embracing an anti-climactic pacing that left me wondering where it was heading. It didn’t care to build any tension or suspense, it was absent any inciting incidents or character depth, it was simply showing us a group of privileged young adults making catastrophic mistakes. I wasn’t rooting for anyone, except maybe for Ally Sheedy’s character to dump her boyfriend, Alec (Judd Nelson).
Most of the characters were unlikable and unrelatable. Even the co-writer and director Joel Schumacher said the head of Universal Pictures told him “Joel, in the history of movies, you have managed to create seven of the worst people I have ever seen on a page”.
Alec was a grade A douchecanoe, pressuring his girlfriend into marriage and unprotected sex while also being a serial cheater. Billy (Rob Lowe) is a married, cheating, drunk-driving, deadbeat dad who’s creepily obsessed with Wendy’s sexual inexperience and has misogynistic double standards that lead to him having a cow when his wife shows up at one of his shows with another man. Jules (Demi Moore) seems determined to mess up every opportunity handed to her via drug abuse and sex with her boss. And don’t even get me started on Kirby (Emilio Estevez) stalking his longtime crush after randomly bumping into her. Ah fuck it—I’m started.
I wanted to shout at the screen “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME” several times, the first time being when Kirby shows up at Dale’s (Andie MacDowell) apartment and demands her roommate tell him where she went. When she asks why she should tell him, he says “Because I’m not responsible for what I’ll do if you don’t”. Then it cuts to Kirby driving up to a ski chalet, angrily knocking on the door and demanding to know why Dale was there with another man. His crush is understandably confused but she and her man invite him in to stay, as if he was a friend who was simply in the neighborhood and not her crazy stalker (another ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME). And holy fucking Jesus toast, the movie treats Kirby’s behavior as normal, not symptomatic of disturbing thoughts and emotional instability. This whole subplot serves to remind people that in the ‘80s, they were still pretty dumb about what stalking looks like, how to handle it, and how dangerous it can be (unless the stalker is a woman, then they get the Fatal Attraction treatment).
Awww…it’s so cute when a guy you’re not interested in becomes a voyeuristic stalker
I’m in no way abusing the word “literally” when I say I was literally rolling my eyes at how the filmmakers decided to dress Mare Winningham’s virginal character Wendy in stereotypically chaste oversized granny clothes, but then I realized her character was also supposed to be “plump” so maybe they thought audiences would be more likely to buy her as overweight if she wore several layers that covered her skinny parts. Plus, it turns out Mare was pregnant during the shoot so maybe they wanted to ensure a baby bump remained hidden, too. But Christ on a crack pipe, when they had Wendy fuck Billy after he’d been using her for her money, landed her in the hospital for drunk driving, and appeared to only have sexual interest in her because she was “a virgin”, and this was portrayed as a sweet scene of a woman losing her sexual innocence, the movie had lost any possibility of redeeming itself.
What did St. Elmo’s Fire want to be? What did it want to say? And what the fuck was that annoying “boogala boogala boogala” thing all about? I discovered the answer to the last question and it sounds kind of racist, but I’ll let you be the judge. Lowe, Estevez, and Judd would hit the bars after filming and felt ignored by the ladies who preferred giving attention to the “rich foreign guys”, so they started mocking the language from whatever country their competitors hailed, resulting in the nonsense phrase above. Apparently, Schumacher let them improvise those scenes in the film.
I’ve tried, guys, I thought long and hard about what I thought the filmmakers wanted to say with this story but I don’t think even they knew. All I do know is it seemed to speak to Generation Jones (late born Boomers) more than Gen X, and if the filmmakers intended it to be a cautionary tale about drug abuse, cheating, and stalking, then it bombed miserably. Watching unsympathetic people use terrible judgment and repeatedly make mistakes only works if we see a resolution with growth and development, not characters with maggots for brains failing upward. They didn’t write a story in which the characters deal with serious repercussions for their misdeeds, instead we see most of their awful decisions get collectively shrugged off, as if the screenwriters wanted the audience to laugh along with them reminiscing about their “glory days”.
If it hadn’t been for the hit song that radio stations made me sick of hearing, would St. Elmo’s Fire even be remembered today as a “movie that defined a generation”? The world may never know.
Don’t hate him because he’s beautiful, hate the stations that played his song too much