Why this documentary is a must see for everyone about to hit 60

A group of young Hollywood actors who defined a whole generation. They were our age, they were successful, they helped tell stories that made us feel seen for the first time ever. Our lives were up on screen.

Growing up here in Australia, I think we missed the whole branding of The Brat Pack. In 1985, a New York journalist, David Blum, coined the phrase in a profile he wrote about Estevez. I've always thought it was a cool moniker. Our parents spoke of the Rat Pack - men such as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin - the kings of cool. Surely this 1980s tag meant the same kinda thing? An aspirational identity?

Not so.

In his documentary Brats (now streaming on Disney +), Brat Pack alumni Andrew McCarthy looks at how the article, and the Brat Pack label, changed the lives of those involved.

The same year Blum's article appeared, two seminal movies came out: John Hughes' The Breakfast Club and Joel Schumacher's St Elmo's Fire. One was about high schoolers in detention, the other on recent university graduates transitioning into adulthood.

Their casts included some of Hollywood's most talented young actors. Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy and Judd Nelson were in both. Breakfast Club also starred Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall. St Elmo's Fire had Rob Lowe, Demi Moore and McCarthy.

For most of them, the world was at their feet.

But once Blum's article came out, everything went to pot.

"I remember seeing that cover and thinking 'oh, f---,'" says McCarthy early in the documentary. "I just thought that was terrible, instantly, and it turns out I was right."

From then on, he says, his whole career was branded as such, and those of his peers. For many of them it was the beginning of the end. He says it changed his life. They scattered.

Until now.

McCarthy thought it might be fun to track a few people down.

He managed to find Estevez, Moore, Sheedy and Lowe, Jon Cryer, or at least these were the ones who agreed to talk to him.

His quest to track down the elusive Judd Nelson is a constant thread. Don't turn off before the final credits.

He hasn't seen many of them in 30 years.

Will he find the answers to what the Brat Pack phenomenon meant to them all? Or is this wonderful documentary about so much more than that?

There comes a point when you're close to 60 that you start thinking about your youth and how you might have done things differently. Maybe that happens close to every significant birthday, but I reckon 60 is kind of a turning point where you realise, for real this time, that the rest of your life is indeed shorter than what's come before.

Is there any point dwelling on the past?

At 50, even, you kind of kid yourself that you're only at the halfway point, of course I'll live to be 100. But by 60, real life has kind of slapped you around the head a bit more. People are dying, or have been diagnosed with illnesses that they might beat, or they might not. You're contemplating retirement and wondering why on earth you've done what you've done for the best part of your adult life to earn some dollars.

Your children don't need you anymore, maybe your partner, if you still have one, doesn't need you so much either.

You spend a lot of time asking yourself, who am I? And who do I want to be for the next 25 (if I'm lucky) years?

The best parts of Brats (apart from all the flashbacks to films you loved - must track down The Falcon and the Snowman with Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn) were McCarthy's face to face interactions with his former Brat Pack members.

In his meeting with Estevez, McCarthy asks why he agreed to talk to him after 30 years.

"Because you called me, because you asked," Estevez says, despite the fact McCarthy talked over him a lot.

"I'm not interested in revisiting, in dredging up the past. If you're too busy looking in your rear vision mirror at what's behind you, you're going to stumble."

Wise words for anyone thinking about the future.

That said, there's a short of Molly Ringwald appearing on the Conan O'Brien show where he asks if there'd be any chance of a Brat Pack reunion when they're all 80.

"You never know," she says. "It could happen."

Now that would be worth living another 20 years for.