philosoraptor42

The Goonies (1985)

When I was doing my reviews of Tobe Hooper's films, I saw a lot of people who were inclined to argue that "Poltergeist" was actually a Spielberg movie, not a Hooper movie. All that might be true, but here we have Spielberg teaming up with Richard Donner not long after his success with both Superman and The Omen and not long before his success with the first Lethal Weapon movie and the Bill Murray movie Scrooged. In spite of Richard Donner being at the height of his career at this stage, "The Goonies" appears to be an absolutely horrendous mess.

"Gremlins" still felt like a Joe Dante film. At its best moments, "Poltergeist" still felt like a Tobe Hooper movie. Though I've not checked out his entire filmography, I'm not sure that "The Goonies" feels like a Richard Donner film at all. I suppose it feels sort of like if someone was told to make a version of Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom only with less than a quarter of the budget and with a bunch of children in place of Harrison Ford and then decided to direct those children by leaving them to do whatever they wanted, including making up their own lines.

Richard Donner being overrun by child 'actors'.

Admittedly using a bunch of children as your lead protagonists is always a risky business. Children haven't had the same amount of time to develop their acting skills and even when they do develop the way they appear to their audience can change dramatically.

Another issue that arises when we are dealing with a whole bunch of children like in "The Goonies" is that even if they successfully give us the impression that we are looking at a bunch of children randomly shouting over one another, that isn't necessarily something we in the audience are going to find entertaining.

In the end, the movies serves to distinguish the various child characters from one another by making each one into a cheesy caricature. There's the asian child with the flawed inventions (the same squeaky yet endearing actor who would go on to seriously out-act the female lead in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom"). There's Corey Feldman of Friday the 13th fame whose major trait seems to be that he can speak Spanish. Josh Brolin (Planet Terror, No Country For Old Men, Milk) is the older more mature figure who feels repsonsible for the others. Sean Astin is the nervous yet determined and brainy child, whose role is to move the plot forward and inspire the others, but who I found irritating, particularly since the plot points he introduced were ridiculously contrived. (Sean Astin would go on to be pretty similarly irritating as Sam Gamgee in LOTR.)

I feel really sorry for Jeff Cohen here because his role is to be "the fat kid". He's introduced by being expected to jiggle his flab for the amusement of the other child characters. Throughout the movie he is chasing after ice cream and failing to get through small gaps. Yet he is also expected to provide much of the comic relief and while the material he is given to work with is utterly dreadful, he clearly puts his absolute all into the part and gives a far more interesting performance than anyone else in the cast.

I couldn't help but feel that the composer of the soundtrack must be the same guy who worked on "The Neverending Story" because there are some points where the two seemed to be just a few notes away from each other's themes. However, it turns out that it's definitely a different composer on those two projects.

The story of "The Goonies" is as follows. A bunch of annoying children decide to break into and vandalise one child's parent's loft which they've been expressly told contains expensive items and that they should therefore keep out. In the loft the main child protagonist (i.e. the least interesting of the bunch) discovers a treasure map, so everyone around him stops destroying the place for a moment to gather round. They all suddenly remember some random and wholly contrived story about a 17th Century pirate called (*ahem*) "one-eyed Willie" (are you KIDDING me?) It turns out that the crudely named pirate is supposed to have been surrounded by the British fleet and ended up being trapped by falling rocks in the Goon Docks in Oregon (where these children live, hence why they call themselves "goonies", see?)

Since the main boring child's family will have to leave their home if his father cannot find funds soon (and that's going to be all the more difficult now the children have trashed several expensive items in the loft), they decide to venture together to find the missing treasure.

The map leads them to an abandoned restaurant where a gang of crooks are hiding out. The crooks decide to pretend it actually IS a restaurant initially (with distinctly less than hilarious results). Eventually they let the children go, then start pursuing them again later on. There's little logic to any of this.

In the restaurant the children discover a route underground. However, 'the fat kid' isn't able to come with them because he's too fat and cowardly (coz the two go together donchaknow... *groan*) and he ends up getting caught by the robbers and forced to sit next to their deformed one-eyed relative who they have chained up in front of the tv.

They go past a number of different traps and hazards and skeletons. They end up walking past the skeletal remains of a figure who they know tried to look for One-eyed Willie's treasure before. Apparently he'd struggled to find the treasure but ended up perishing, presumably in one of One-Eyed Willie's traps. They then find themselves at the bottom of the town's wishing well. Yes, that's right, it turns out that this is all happening just underneath the main town. Apparently surveyors in the town failed to notice the series of tunnels directly connected to the town's wishing well. *shrugs*

Anyway, this is around half way through the movie. There's still around a whole hour left to go and I sat through it all so I could justify this review. It SO wasn't worth it. Things do NOT get any better in the second half. To finish with a mild spoiler: All the horrible little brats survive and remain just as annoying from start to finish.

E-

Also, check out this entertaining article from the spoof-news website "The Daily Mash".