St. Elmo's Fire

It is quite easy to see why this picture was so completely reviled when it first came out. Not from an artistic standpoint, you see, but from what is in essence a moral one. It is a self-centered, self-absorbed, and therefone completely repellent vision of Yuppie trauma, in which the biggest issues are who is sleeping with whom and which law school to apply to. Let's face it: a drama about a group of recent grads who can't stop acting like frat boys in this workaday world just doesn't carry much weight in a day when much of the earth's population doesn't get enough to eat. On the other hand... that's kind of a jag, because who cares? I mean, most movies don't carry too much weight in this day (not everything can be “The Killing Fields,” and just as well, too) so why should this picture be any exception? Maybe the problem was that it took itself too seriously. Who knows? Who cares? All that having been said, the fact is that the picture is moderately engaging, good ensemble playing by a very attractive group of performers (including much of the notorious Hollywood "brat pack”) So why waste time complaining? Doing so really lends the picture more credibility than it deserves and also wastes more time. In the end, all the unrealistic characters come to equally unrealistic ends, and everything is resolved... more or less. The essence of ambiguity. They bravely turn to face the new day, new life, new whatever. Yuppie heaven.