Ah the memories (LNMIII)

Richard Donner, director of such classics as Timeline, and Conspiracy Theory...

Wait a second maybe he's not the greatest director afterall. Well he must be getting old or something because back in the 80's this director helmed what has gone on to become one of my longtime favorite childhood movies. The Goonies; directed by Donner, and written by the combined talents of Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg, is a film that recalls to mind every childhood fantasy you had about bandits, booby traps and buried treasure.

What makes the film such an endearing classic though is simply the sheer energy of the whole thing. It tells the story of young Mikey Walsh who decides that the only way of stopping his childhood home from being sold is to get together The Goony Gang (The name of his gang) and track down the missing treasure of pirate One Eyed Willy. They have a map, the smarts to figure it out and the spirit to succeed where the only other person to try has been killed. In fact everything seems to be going perfectly until they realize that the only way to start their journey is to go through the secret hideout of escaped gangster family The Frattellis.

From this point on the film is none stop adrenaline fueled fun. It just bounces from one classic set piece to the next without giving you time to breath and realize how utterly unoriginal it all is. I mean who will ever forget the hilarious scene with the drainage pipes, the dizzying drop down the spiked pit, or best of all the breathless scene involving the bone organ and retractable floor combo. When you factor in the fact that The Frattellis are hot on their heels and suffering at the hands of the kids cartoon violence then the film truly never stops moving.

Luckily for a film that relies so heavily on pure energy it's gotten together a young cast simply brimming over with uncontrolled excitement. I've heard it complained that the film has bad acting, but who cares when the kids are this much fun. From Sean Astin's delivery on his classic "It's their time, their time, up there! Down here it's our time, our time, down here" speech, to Corey Feldman's mischievous translation for the Spanish maid, these kids will constantly make you laugh. Yes the cries of Jeff Cohen's Chunk may be completely fake, and his I love you lines completely cloying, but his excitement is such that you find yourself reciting his lines all the same. Of course the best of them could only be Jonathan Ke Quan. I mean sure Data's inventions are some of the films most memorable things, but this is all really down to Ke Quan's performance. Remember what he did in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom, well he had that kind of energy here first. Everything about this kid, from his gleeful cries of "$50 bills!" as he finds a money printer, to his quiet whine as he realizes they're fake, to his cheeky grin as he uses his retractable boxing glove, this kid is just WOW.

Even the grown ups get in on the energy as Robert Davi makes opera singing scary, and Joe Pantoliano becomes the embodiment of Whiley Coyote as he constantly hurts himself in comical ways while trying desperately to get the kids.

There is also one other thing worth mentioning though. That's Sloth, the disfigured but friendly Frattelli. You could say that this character brought an important message of accepting others regardless of their appearance, but of course that's not what you remember him for. Everyone remembers him for ripping off his shirt to reveal a superman vest before beating his brothers upside the head. This guy rocks.

At the end of the day, with all of that energy on display I don't have to explain myself. I simply love this flick.



This has been another entry into Tom's Lean-N-Mean III Writeoff.