The "Brat Pack" is the collective term for a group of young actors who came to fame in The '80s and became virtually synonymous with coming-of-age movies, particularly the works of John Hughes.
Actors associated with the group included Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Andrew McCarthy, Anthony Michael Hall, and Rob Lowe.
Unlike the Rat Pack, however, the Brat Pack wasn't an established group who hung out and collaborated out of friendship. Rather, they were actors who happened to work together on a number of popular films and got lumped as a group because they attracted large audiences.
The term itself was coined by writer David Blum in what was actually a critical commentary
about how the actors behaved, in Blum's view, liked brats off camera and seemed to represent the worst excesses of the 80's. However, audiences and the Hollywood press loved the term and applied it to the associated actors wherever they could. The actors themselves saw "Brat Pack" as a slur and, after the article's publication, began avoiding working together to distance themselves and avoid being tied to the term. Years later, however, many started accepting that they'd be forever linked to it, some even viewing it with affection.
Films commonly associated with the Brat Pack:
- About Last Night...: Rob Lowe, Demi Moore
- Betsys Wedding: Molly Ringwald, Ally Sheedy
- Blue City: Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson
- The Breakfast Club: Molly Ringwald, Anthony Michael Hall, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy
- Class: Andrew McCarthy, Rob Lowe
- Fresh Horses: Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy
- The Outsiders: Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe
- Oxford Blues: Rob Lowe, Ally Sheedy
- Pretty in Pink: Molly Ringwald, Andrew McCarthy
- St. Elmo's Fire: Demi Moore, Judd Nelson, Ally Sheedy, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Emilio Estevez
- Sixteen Candles: Anthony Michael Hall, Molly Ringwald
- Wisdom (1986): Emilio Estevez, Demi Moore
Associated Tropes:
- Adults Are Useless: Adults will generally have either a minor role, or act as Obstructive Bureaucrats.
- All of the Other Reindeer: According to Rob Lowe, Michael J. Fox used to complain to him about not being considered a member (although Lowe is pretty sure he was joking).
- Alpha Bitch
- Atrocious Alias: The actors in question hated the term "Brat Pack" (not helped by the fact that the article that coined the phrase was actually critical of how the actors behaved like, well, brats off camera, and viewed to represent them as the worst excesses of the '80s) so much that they stopped working together almost immediately after the phrase was coined, making this trope directly responsible for the end of the short-lived Brat Pack "age."
- The '80s And how! There's no way to NOT know what decade these films were set in.
- High School: The setting for nearly every Brat Pack film; the only notable exceptions are St. Elmo's Fire and About Last Night....
- In with the In Crowd
- Monochrome Casting: You might notice that all the actors and actresses mentioned above are Caucasian.
- Production Posse: The trope that led to the birth of the Brat Pack (as well as all future "Packs").
- Sex as Rite-of-Passage
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Unnecessary Makeover: A couple of the movies (though not all by far) feature one of these, such as Allison in The Breakfast Club and Ducky in Pretty In Pink (although the later is clearly meant to be temporary).
