Brat Pack America: A Love Letter to ’80s Teen Movies
- Aug 14, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 13
★★★☆☆
Goodreads lists the title of this book as Brat Pack America: Visiting Cult Movies of the ’80s, but they’ve got the subtitle wrong. It’s actually A Love Letter to ’80s Teen Movies, and I suspect the former might have been a working title that was changed not long before going to press. I thought I was getting the former book, which author Kevin Smokler only somewhat delivers on, but mostly ended up with the latter, which the author also only somewhat delivers on.
This is ostensibly a book about the importance of place in ’80s teen movies. But place doesn’t actually seem to matter in many of the movies Smokler discusses (a point he also discusses), which is where the “love letter” angle of the book comes in. It’s clear Smokler has a real affinity for the movies he writes about, and at its best moments Brat Pack America gave me the warm fuzzies about the ones I already love while also making a compelling case for those I’d dismissed, never seen, or, in a few instances, never even heard of.
The problem is that there are problems. Smokler’s writing style is somewhat inconsistent, largely trying to come across as authoritative and academic, but sometimes slipping into fandom-style blogging. The former feels disingenuous and a little too self-serious (this is, after all, a love letter to ’80s movies), the latter much more natural (both for him and the material). I would have preferred the latter. Grammar, punctuation, and typographical errors, while not rampant, crop up just often enough to be distracting. Rather than tackling one movie at a time, Smokler looked for themes around which to cluster them together—the Shermer, Illinois John Hughes movies; the Los Angeles teen movie; the first hip-hop movies; ’80s teen movies set in the ’50s; ’80s sport movies; ’80s teen movies and technology; the black-hearted ’80s teen movies; cities and towns changed by the ’80s teen movies shot there. The conceit sounds great, but the execution is inconsistent. Some chapters were fully-formed and packed with real substance. Others felt thin and padded, Smokler working hard to make something from nothing. Finally, where the fuck is Say Anything…? How can you be a serious ’80s teen movie fan (writing what is supposed to be the definitive ’80s teen movie book) and not include one of the greatest ’80s teen romances, especially when the very idea of place (Seattle) is so much a part of the film?
Still, nitpicks and major complaints and one glaring omission aside, this was a fun way to reminisce, discover some films you might have missed out on completely (for me: The Sure Thing, My Science Project, Over the Edge (actually released in 1979), The Legend of Billie Jean, Running on Empty), learn a fair bit of history and trivia along the way, and find out where or how or even if you can visit the real locations from some of your favorite movies.
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