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If you were a movie buff in the 1980s, you were familiar with the so-called “Brat Pack.” The term, which comes from a June 1985 article new York A magazine article about Emilio Estevez titled “Hollywood’s Brat Pack” referred to a nebulous group of young actors who seemed to herald a sea change in the types of films the industry was making. The article’s author, David Blum, mentioned a few names – Estevez, Tom Cruise, Judd Nelson, Timothy Hutton, Matt Dillon – but the term quickly came to encompass others for various reasons.

One of them was Andrew McCarthy, who became a member through his role in the 1985 ensemble film. St. Elmo’s Fire. He and others came to resent the label, finding it reductive and inaccurate, despite the fact that many of them starred in several films together. Now, nearly 40 years later, McCarthy is trying to untangle these complicated feelings by directing the new Hulu documentary, Kids.

McCarthy serves as the face of the film, conducting self-interviews of sorts while walking or driving. He also takes it upon himself to contact anyone labeled or associated with the Brat Pack to see if they would be willing to talk about this period of their life. This leads to interviews with various actors, including Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Jon Cryer, Lea Thompson, Hutton, Demi Moore and Rob Lowe.

What stood out from these conversations was how exciting each of them found the frenzy surrounding the term, especially since most of them didn’t date each other outside of film sets. And while McCarthy and others say the label preyed on actors’ fears and doubts about themselves, others, like Cryer and Thompson, lament that they weren’t “officially” members.

The interviews also reveal that no one can agree on who exactly was in the group. Those who played in St. Elmo’s Fire – McCarthy, Lowe, Moore, Nelson, Estevez and Sheedy – seem to be at the top of the rankings, but where is their co-star Mare Winningham? Three of these six actors also starred in the 1985s. The breakfast clubbut only one of that film’s two other stars – Molly Ringwald – is mentioned in the film, with Anthony Michael Hall’s name never even appearing.

McCarthy illustrates the media’s obsession with the group by showing a variety of old interviews with himself and other stars. He also conducts interviews with industry insiders like director Howard Deutch and producer Lauren Shuler Donner, pop culture critic Ira Madison III, novelist Bret Easton Ellis and others to get the perspectives of people not part of the group. He even finds Blum, which results in an enlightening speech that ends with the two expressing their feelings of kinship towards each other.

What becomes clear is that the name “Brat Pack” represented a specific moment, then somehow morphed to define an entire generation of actors. As McCarthy says in the film: “That it didn’t really exist doesn’t even matter. » Indeed, many of them felt that the name changed the way they were perceived in the industry and therefore limited the potential of many of their careers.

Despite the somewhat downbeat nature of their conversations, fans of the actors will probably have a blast seeing them reconnect after all these years. And McCarthy liberally uses both scenes from the era’s films and the iconic songs derived from them, leaning heavily on the nostalgia they elicit. The very last scene fits both perfectly, connecting the documentary to a film that many know and love.

Even though how the “Brat Pack” label affected a small number of actors isn’t the most important topic in the world, the enduring films they made in a short period of time are an important part of the history of cinema. If nothing else, Kids further demonstrates how actors share the same doubts, fears and insecurities about themselves as ordinary people. The only difference is that the light shining on them can exacerbate these feelings immeasurably.

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Kids is now streaming on Hulu.