Saturday, April 24, 2010

The Goonies Are Worth Watching

By Greg Harvey

If you remember the eighties, then you certainly remember The Goonies. This movie was a classic. On the other hand, if you still haven't seen it for some crazy reason... Think Pirates of the Caribbean meets Stand By Me meets Indiana Jones meets The Sopranos meets... Well, it's a whole lot of different movies all wrapped into one, really. It's primarily an adventure flick, but it makes a lot of stops along the way, and stands as one of the all time classic kids movie downloads.

The movie focuses on Mikey Walsh and his band of "Goonies", kids from the docks area of Astoria, Oregon. The kids are sort of the outcasts, the rejects, the ne'er do wells of the town, who have a long on-going rivalry with the rich kids. This rivalry comes to a head when the local rich guys plan to foreclose on the neighborhood and turn it into a golf course.

So, the Goonies have to go get some buried treasure to save their neighborhood. They find a treasure map in dad's attic, they go to a restaurant on the edge of town where it turns out there are some Italian gangsters known as the Fratellis hiding out, and keeping their little brother, Sloth, a gigantic, deformed monster with a heart of gold chained up to a chair watching black and white TV all day. So the kids have to somehow get into the caves under the restaurant and find the treasure without getting the Fratellis' attention and...

It sounds like a lot of information to take in all at once: Pirates, the mafia, buried treasure, foreclosures... But if you just stay along for the ride, you don't have to worry about keeping track of all that. Just enjoy it for what it is, a fast paced, action filled adventure romp through caves and crypts, culminating in a showdown on an underground pirate ship.

The movie is really a lot of fun. What makes it work is that it's shot in a fairly matter of fact style. It doesn't feel like a fantasy film, really. It feels just as real as Stand By Me or any other coming of age film. The fact that it has pirate ships and all kinds of crazy stuff like that, well, that's sort of just the background of the movie.

When the film came out, it was considered to be a little TOO fast paced, with booby traps and swordfights breaking out at the drop of a hat. However, when compared to the manic pace of most modern children's films, The Goonies is downright laid back.

Anyways, it really is one of the quintessential eighties flicks. The style, the music, the genre, even, it's all eighties, so at the very least, it'll bring you back if you grew up in that decade.

But it really is a classic in its own right. If you haven't seen it in awhile, watch it again. Any child of the eighties should have a copy on their hard drive ready to watch at the drop of a hat. You'll need it for when you have kids of your own and you want them to know how good movies used to be back when you were a kid!

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