Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

Contentar Best movie of this year hands down!

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Jakoba True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

kcjanae For years I've said I should eventually watch this movie. Finally did. My husband and I had the same thought at the same time...is there a plot to this movie? You could arguable say it's about the changes in life that cause changes in friendships etc., but especially in the beginning there are a lot of scene changes that don't seem to go anywhere. Plus, it's just weird. The men are all weird, and I do not get the strange Emilio obsession with Andie McDowell, or why she keeps letting him in houses when he's acting like a psycho. I suppose this movie is supposed to be endearing in some way, but it's pretty depressing. In the end, all it's about is shallow, empty sex lives. Leave it to the 80's.

archaeotypetw I'm sure St. Elmo's Fire is considered to be a defining 80's movie, and the ship that launched half a dozen careers but good grief, it is a stupid movie. Nuf said.

Michael_Elliott St. Elmo's Fire (1985) ** (out of 4) Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Andrew McCarthy, Judd Nelson, Demi Moore, Ally Sheedy and Mare Winningham are seven friends who graduate and soon realize that being adults isn't nearly as much fun as they thought. We follow their various ups and downs with much drama in between.ST. ELMO'S FIRE has a rather amazing cast and especially when you look back on the picture. Not only do you have the seven main leads but there's also Martin Balsam and Andie MacDowell so there's no denying the star power. I've never really liked this picture yet for some reason I usually go back and revisit it ever so often. Obviously the main reason to watch the picture is because of the terrific cast and I thought all of them delivered great performances. It's just too bad they weren't given much to work with.As I get older I think these characters are all the more shallow. Some might say they were people in their 20s so they were supposed to be annoying and shallow but I don't buy that at all. To me the characters are very poorly written here and there's just no real development with any of them. None of them are very believable and for the most part they are all single motivated characters with no development and there's not much charm to any of them. It's really too bad because the cast is excellent but they just didn't have anything here. You can watch any of these actors in much better films from this period.The film remains watchable thanks to the cast but when the final credits come on you can't help but think you've just wasted your time. I mean, this cast ends up with these results? It's really a shame but there's more issues than just the screenplay. I'd argue that Joel Schumacher's direction is pretty bland and there's nothing good looking about the picture. You do get a great score and a catchy main song but none of this is enough to save the picture.

DiscoStu2 Unfortunately this was a movie made for my generation, and unlike a fine wine which may get better with age, this was more like an old can of "New Coke" that has only degraded even further with time. After having sat through the torturous experience in 1985 and paying for the original privilege of watching this abomination back in the good old days, I thought I would revisit it in the year of our lord 2014 to see if time and experience had sharpened my insight and appreciation of this pretentious stink bomb. Sorry but the answer is now as it was then "no". It was painfully, self-absorbed tripe then and is even more difficult to watch now. Kind of like your friend reminding you years later about how you made a schmuck of yourself at a party years ago. Forget about explaining the plot, it's virtually non-existent and more or less just contrived motifs to showcase forced bad acting and interactions that are supposed to be meaningful and poignant but are really just forced shallow overacting. Previous generations had Bogart, Brando, Dean, Newman, and McQueen. Sadly my generation had...these people. In all fairness the blame can't be laid entirely at the feet of this group of too much stardom, too soon brat packers; most of them were still in their early twenties and to give them the benefit of the doubt, may have still been learning their craft even though they were being paid handsomely for the lessons. Much of the blame should probably also go to the two writers and the director; two of whom were Joel Schumacher. The intention here appears to mostly have been about exploiting these seven young rising stars in a bad forced combination similar to watching a terrible 80's musical super group. Bad musical synth pop overlays, also very 80's, filling the scenes out also didn't help. Do real people really behave in such shallow, self-indulgent, and boring histrionics? No, not really. If you've ever gone to Times Square NYC and stood next to a cardboard cutout of a celebrity, then you get the gist of this ensemble of predictable now very dated 80's stereotypes; the hypocritical career climber politico (Judd Nelson), the self-destructive, emotionally vacant, druggie (both Lowe and Moore), the overage, good girl, virgin (something out of the '40's), and on and on. If buckets of forced crying, laughing, pathos, yelling, etc., but nothing emotionally substantial for the viewer to identify with in any real way is your cup of tea then this may be your type of film. Believe it or not at the time I worked with a guy who loved this movie. I couldn't even muster a comeback to that statement beyond "Really?!!". Whenever I may get nostalgic for the 80's I need only channel this movie to cure myself of that. Hard to watch in the original, almost painfully masochistic to watch now. Glad to see that many of these people, including Joel Schumacher, went on to do much better work than this, but hey, the studio was paying and the rest was on the house.