Goonies: Good Enough For Me!

I grew up in the eighties, and I think "Goonies" is the quintessential childhood adventure movie of this generation. When I first saw it all those years ago I loved it and, having seen it again just a few days ago, I remembered why.

This movie is not like kids' movies today. It doesn't insult your intelligence, for one. It presents a fantastical adventure that isn't impossible. It focusses on real kids with real parents who have real problems. In this case, the people of the Goondocks are being evicted from their homes by a greedy land developer who wants to build a golf course where their houses are. Knowing that they might never see each other again, Mikey (Sean Astin), his older brother (Josh Brolin), their friends Chunk (Jeff Cohen), Mouth (Corey Feldman) and Data (I can't remember his name, that funny Asian kid) decide to make one last adventure together, following a map Mikey found in his dad's attic (his dad is a museum curator,) hoping the map will lead them to the hidden pirate ship of One-Eyed Jack, which was reputed to carry treasure.

The kids run into trouble, however. The Fratelli family (played by such actors as Joe Pantoliano) is on the run, and they have hidden out in the house under which is the maze of tunnels leading to the ship. The catch on to the kids' exploits and manage to capture one of them, Chunk.

Chunk is funny. Perhaps one of the funniest movie scenes ever is when he confesses to them the time he went on to a movie theatre balcony and threw fake puke over the rail. He is so scared and blubbering so much it just adds to the hilarity.

Evetually Chunk finds help from Sloth, the unwanted Fratelli child who is deformed but very large and scary. When Chunk befriends him, though, Sloth helps him escape and together they find the other friends, who eventually find the ship but must fight off the villains.

Eventually the cave in which the ship lays is destroyed, and the ship floats out for the first time in hundreds of years. The friends don't walk away with the treasure... or do they? At the end of the movie the villains are arrested, and the families are able to keep their houses because of a bag of jewels Mikey had stowed in his jacket. Sloth goes to live with Chunk... okay, I found this a little unbelievable, but that's a kid's movie for you. It still made me choke up.

Though not a perfect movie, it spellbound a generation of kids with similar dreams of adventure, quoting Mikey saying, "Up there, it's their time, but down here, it's our time!" They identified themselves with the idealist asthmatic Mikey, the hilarious, whiney, and always hungry Chunk, the smooth-talking Mouth, and the inventive and spastic Data. The kids were melodramatic, always screaming, but you can't fault them for it.

And many years later, a group of friends in their mid-twenties got together to watch it again, and did the same thing. I was Sloth, shouting, "HEY YOU GUYS!"