Thursday night movie

Last night, hunting around for something to watch, I came on "The Goonies" (already in progress, but it seems this is one of the heavy-rotation current Discovery Family movies).

I remember seeing this when it was out in the theater. I don't think anyone realized the potential cult status of the movie when it first came out - it was one of those summer "kid" movies. I went to see it with a friend from high school; I cannot now remember if my mom and younger brother also saw it with us.

(interestingly, it's rated PG despite, I guess, the original version having the "s word" in it a number of times. I don't remember that. But somewhere I read that Jonathan Ke Huy Quan, the actor who played "Data," at one point yelled out "Holy S-H-I...." spelling the word rather than saying it. Because, he said, he had promised his mom he wouldn't say "bad words." Heh.)


It's a far-fetched story - centered on a group of kids whose homes in the "Goon Docks" are about to be foreclosed upon for a golf course. Through some machinations, they wind up with a "treasure map" that supposedly directs them to One-Eyed Willie's treasure. They decide to go off in search of it, figuring if they find it, they could pay off their homes for their parents and not have to leave....

The special effects are fairly dated but that's actually part of the charm of the whole thing - no CGI, no post-production niceties. A lot of the charm of the movie, I think, centers on the relationship between the kids: quiet introspective Mikey, goofy fat-kid "Chunk," the slighly smarmy and obnoxious "Mouth," and "Data," with all his crazy inventions (he is a wanna-be 007).

In some ways it's almost a fantasy version of "Stand By Me," just set in a different place (and era) and without the "dead kid" bit.

They set off, pursued by Mikey's older brother and two girls - one played by Martha Plimpton, the other who has a crush on Mikey's brother.

They wind up running afoul of a ridiculous crime family (like a lot of kid movies, the "bad guys" are less menacing and more dumb and defeatable). And then there's "Sloth."

I wonder if this movie would be made today. There's a lot some people might find offensive in it - in some ways, both Chunk and Data are stereotypes of their respective groups. And Sloth....well, it's never said what Sloth's medical/developmental problems are, but there are a bunch of them. He is odd looking, to say the least, doesn't really speak (though given that he seems to quickly pick up some language from Chunk, who befriends him, maybe it was just that the rest of his family never spoke much to him).

Mainly, I had forgotten how *fun* this movie is. It's just goofy, escapist fantasy, lots of special effects, lots of danger-that-isn't-so-dangerous. And in the end, yeah, the kids get just enough of One-Eyed Willie's treasure to save their homes. (Nice little touch: when they come upon the treasure, they start grabbing it, but Mikey stops them from taking the coins out of a hanging balance: "No. That's Willie's." Later on it is show that removing those coins triggers a booby trap.)

And now the movie is more than 30 years old...