Goonies
Watching this cult classic from 1985 almost fills one up with a sense of melancholy for that particular decade: the days when kids enjoyed simpler pleasures before the Internet, cell phones, 3D video games, and social media poisoned their hearts and their minds. Director Richard Donner gathered together a cast of unknowns (many of whom had major acting careers after) under the watchful eye of Executive Producer Steven Spielberg and made a film that, while not great, has stood the test of time in nothing else but strictly nostalgia. The plot concerns a bunch of kids whose parents are about to lose their homes to foreclosure in their sleepy Oregon suburbs when one of them (whose dad is a museum curator) takes the rest to the attic where they find all kinds of pirate artifacts including a treasure map that may just lead to a fortune (and save their mom and dad’s hides) and set out for it, pursued all along by a gang of criminals consisting of a battle axe mother and her two prissy sons. Everything else about the film is just filler at that point, beautifully lit and shot in the tradition of the Indy Jones films, that shows the kids enduring a series of booby traps as they quest further for the loot. While the writing and character development is not totally up to par and leaves the cast mostly playing “types” instead of real people, the actors do manage to bring a lot of charm to the table with what they have to work with and instill quite a bit of heart to the proceedings, which probably explains the film’s enduring popularity. Basically the lineup consists of Sean Astin as the kid with asthma who nonetheless earnestly spurs the others on the adventure; Josh Brolin as his older brother who tries to take charge with a faux bully act; Corey Feldman as the kid with the big mouth who appropriately enough is called Mouth; Jeff Cohen as Chunk, without a doubt the greatest example of a “movie fat kid” in cinema history; Ke Huy Quan as the Asian wiz kid with a jacketful of gadgets that helps saves their asses more than once; Kerri Green as the bland cheerleader type who tags along because of her attraction to Brolin; and Martha Plimpton as the less attractive girl who tags along because of her friendship with the cheerleader. As for the criminals, we have Anne Ramsey chewing up the scenery as the hatchet-faced mother; Robert Davi as the opera singing brother who suffers great abuse at the hands of his mom; and Joe Pantoliano as the mama’s boy brother who revels in the attention he gets that his brother is so richly denied. In addition, of course, there is John Matuszak (who died four years after filming from massive overuse of steroids) as the deformed younger brother Sloth, who turns out to be a good guy especially through his bonding with the fat kid. Overall, a fairly loaded lineup for a kid’s movie, and while it does feature its share of corny, awkward moments (mostly from Astin), and an editing style so rapid fire that sometimes it’s a little hard to keep up, there are also moments of genuine humor that comes out of the characters themselves, particularly when the criminals implore Chunk to tell them everything he knows, and he proceeds to give a tearful confession of everything he’s ever done bad in his LIFE, leading to Davi actually putting his arm around him to console him! The score is evocative and perfectly suited for this type of material, and the soundtrack features a song from 80s pop diva Cyndi Lauper as well, which really helps to harken back to the supercool era from whence it came, and sadly, we may never see again…
7/10