The Goonies

The Goonies is a perfect example of the power of nostalgia and the internet. Nostalgia is not a new thing. I think it's in human nature to remember fondly the things that we saw, did, and experienced as children and try to recreate those experiences. Now the way we act on nostalgia has changed and in recent history nostalgia has taken form in movies and people have tried to recreate the experiences they had as kids watching movies. With the internet that is very, VERY easy. If you watched The Goonies as a kid, you can easily go on the internet and re-watch it with the same enthusiasm as you did as a kid and you can connect with people who also had that experience. By doing that you can empathize with other people and take a break from the realities of growing up. This nostalgia feeling is so easy to recreate that it almost has become addictive for people and studios are realizing that addictive feeling is profitable. So profitable that that nostalgia is showing up in the form of remakes and used as inspiration for writing TV shows and movies nowadays.

However, The Goonies is also an example of people watching a film with the same lens they had watching it as a kid and being blinded by that lens to the real problems with a film. That's where I come in.

The Goonies follows the story of a group of kids who call themselves The Goonies. It's made up of Mikey, the asthmatic leader (played by Sean Astin), Clark, or "Mouth", the cool skeptic (played by Corey Feldman), Data, the tech wizard token minority (played by Jonathan Ke Huy Quan, or as

everyone knows him, Short Round from Indiana Jones), and Chunk, the fat kid stereotype (played by Jeff Cohen). They are the best of friends who at the end of their summer are facing the hard reality that the house that Mikey and his brother Brandon (played by Josh Brolin) live in with their parents, the place they always play at is being sold. Now this is sad but the truth is, I think there's an unmentioned reality that Mikey's dad was just bad with his money and he wasn't paying the bills. But whatever.

But then the boys find a treasure map from the legendary One Eyed Willie (har. har. har.) and realize that the treasure can't be far. They go on a swashbuckling adventure to find One Eyed Willies gold and help pay to save the house.

Along for the ride is Brandon and two high school girls. I know that Stranger Things kind of stole the basic character for these two girls from Goonies, especially Barb, but the reality is, Stranger Things did those characters better (I'll talk about that in a little bit) so I'm just going to call them Nancy and Barb even though those aren't their names. (played by Keri Green, and Martha Plimpton).

All together, the Goonies make their way through harrowing traps and dangerous caves in order to find the treasure. But on their tail is a family trio of criminals bent on finding the treasure first and skipping town (played by Anne Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano, and Robert Davi).

I'll talk about the good things first. Despite some of the things I'm going to say about the cast, especially the kids, it is a solid cast. Despite some of the flaws, they still manage to create a classic feeling to them and there is a reason why they've been recreated in other movies, not just Stranger Things. They kind of set the bar for a group of down to earth kids in cinema leading to movies like Stand By Me and more down the road. Movies like this understand that being a kid isn't innocent and clean. They use swear words, they're kind of nasty to one another but it still has that feeling of friendship and authenticity. Now I'd argue they set the bar low considering what we got later on but again we'll get to that in a little bit.

The other thing that I appreciate about this film is that it is a straight up adventure film. There are very few films that really exemplify adventure in it's purest form. Indiana Jones is one of them, The Goonies is one too. Now I don't think Goonies comes anywhere near Indiana Jones in quality, but it is good to get a movie that is a straight up adventure. For the people who grew up with this film, I totally understand why this film appealed to people when they were kids. If you were around the same age as these kids, this was a great dream that you and your friends would get together and have an adventure. Believe me, I still dream of that today.

But I'm going to be straight up with you, The Goonies is not that great of a film. Whatever magic it had for you when you watched it as a kid, that no longer exists today in 2017.

First off, this movie is for kids. That's not the reason its bad, I'm just saying if you say The Goonies is going to be good to your friend who is 25 and never saw it as a kid, it's not going to be for them. As much as these kids swear and do things kids would do, they are horribly written kids.

Everything is spelled out in the simplest of terms and even that I think is a little hard to comprehend because while these kids are being kids, they're not getting across important story points in the midst of them barely getting the dialogue out as they're talking over on another and screaming. It was actually kind of infuriating trying to grasp a lot of talking points in this movie because someone would be talking and the other would be screaming over them.

The Sandlot had kids that would be hyper and energetic, but when important plot points were happening or exposition was happening, Squince Palledorous would tell them all to "SHHH QUIET, IT JUST WENT TO BED".

I like Sean Astin, I think he's had a great career after this film and continues to have one moving forward, but man did he suck at reading lines when he played this role.

Also they really made Sean Astin obsessed with a dead pirate named One Eyed Willie. Believe me, I thought it was funny at first but it gets a little creepy the more Sean Astin fawns over how much he wants One Eyed Willie's gold... Ew.

The rest of the characters are very much the same and while they create pretty easy to grasp stereotypes, there's not a lot to know about them besides Sean Astin has asthma, Mouth is your bad boy, Data likes machines and is Asian, and Chunk is fat.

Also while we're on the subject of Chunk... the truffle shuffle isn't really funny.

I'm not gonna sit here and talk about fat shaming a 10 year old kid, that's not really the point. While that is something that would never happen in a movie today without it being portrayed as a horrible bullying scene, I chalk it up to a product of the times. Not necessarily the right thing, but also I don't think they were trying to be malicious with the scene. I don't think it works in 2017, but it's mostly done with good-ish intentions.

My critique is that this movie is well known for the truffle shuffle scene and it happens one time. Once and it is never brought up again. Why is it so iconic if it doesn't even play into the character for the rest of the movie? I guess i just don't really understand why people think this is so funny.

But back onto the characters, I thought Josh Brolin's character felt out of place and the two female characters felt very tacked on. Like I said, they are the inspiration for Nancy and Barb in Stranger Things but like I said, that trope has been done better.

I do realize I am referencing Stranger Things a lot in this review and I should be talking about this movie instead of that, but it's to make a point that this movie does not stand up because while it provided inspiration for pieces of art later on doesn't exactly mean it's a great film, especially when the things that it inspired are a lot better.

I haven't even mentioned the cartoon-y villains because the truth is, they're not that great. In all the years that people were telling me to watch The Goonies, nobody said you need to watch it for the villains because they're not that distinct. There is a woman and she's the mother to two Italian guys. That's it. They're not very threatening and actually feel a little bit out of place in the grand scheme of things.

I guess I feel bad for shitting on this movie. At the end of the day it is a mostly harmless film from a classic director like Richard Donner and a producer like Steven Spielberg and you can see their finger prints all over.

In my opinion, the 80s was a strange decade for Steven Spielberg. While he directed great films like Indiana Jones, he produced a couple of movies that were pretty odd. At the time I'm sure they were odd as well. And while some were hits like Back to the Future, others were odd choices even today like Gremlins and this film.

I didn't even mention Sloth because I'll be honest...

I don't know what they were going for with Sloth. Besides being a Deus Ex Machina at the end to save the children, the only other thing he provides to the film is a more than hilarious but ultimately depressing sounding epilogue where we look in to see Chunk's parent's reaction when he brings home a developmentally challenged adult who they immediately would have to put in the hospital.

I don't know, maybe my childhood wonder died out a long time ago and maybe I'm just a stick in the mud but I can't say this movie is very good. I'd be interested in hearing other people's opinions. What did you think of The Goonies? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

I'll leave you with this. Regardless of my thoughts on this film, it's still fun seeing people's reactions and nostalgia to this film. This was actually Josh Brolin's first film and this is him talking about filming it. Enjoy!