Beloved by everyone under the age of ten who saw it back in the day, The Goonies was one of a wave of successful efforts by Steven Spielberg to move into producing films revolving around a number of repeating motifs, as forces of anarchy and the lure of adventure disturb the frustrating slumber of small towns and give the young heroes some fun. The Goonies is not as dynamically weird as Joe Dante’s riff on those themes, Gremlins (1984), or as original and cunning as Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future (1985), and skewed rather more obviously to a distinctly younger audience. But that audience, the kids of the ‘80s, lapped up the aggressively modern portrayal of them as good-hearted but foul-mouthed, cheeky swashbucklers driven to act out in rebellious ways only in service to a larger purpose; the raw energy of youth, painted as a social problem in films like Jonathan Kaplan’s Over the Edge (1979), needed only appropriate channelling. The reassuring portrait of an outsider’s club that embraces with far more warmth that any insider could know similarly underpins the Harry Potter tales. Of course this film’s screenwriter, Chris Columbus, handled the first two Harry Potter films. The pity there is that Columbus
A key reason for the fondness with which I, and I suspect a lot of other ‘80s kids, remembered The Goonies was in its rich sense of atmosphere, always a vital Donner trait. Handling the usual well-crafted Spielberg production, in a fashion similar to how Donner constructed an effervescent nostalgic haze even in a contemporary setting with Superman (1978; Donner inserts a little self-tribute late in the film), here he paints with swift effect the small coastal town and the adventurous environs. The wintry, rainy landscape, stormy sea coast and forests, shadowy ruined abodes, glimpses of howling, monstrous misshapen men, are all wielded with aplomb, building to such magic-realist moments as that in which the gang happens upon an underground chamber into which generations of coins thrown by folk into the wishing well above have fallen, and the final shot of a ruined galleon riding the high seas. Like Back to the Future, it plays as a practical fetish for its era with the glimpse of Cyndi Lauper singing on TV and Brand’s fitness fanaticism. The Goonies are the gang led by the almost mystically distracted asthmatic Mikey Walsh (Astin), the bullshit artiste Mouth (Feldman), the inventive Data (Ke Quan), and the perpetually hungry Chunk (Cohen). The end of their town is apparently looming: through some unexplained loophole, the locality is up for grabs to smarmy real estate developer Elgin Perkins (Curtis Hanson – not the director), and Mikey’s father (Keith Walker), a local bigwig, doesn’t have the funds to prevent the buyout. In their frustrated distraction, the boys happen upon some local heirlooms, including a map in Spanish and a doubloon that proves a visual aid, in the attic of Walsh house. These supposedly provide a guide through the warren of booby-trapped tunnels dug by pirate king One-Eyed Willy, to the hiding place of his pirate ship and its treasure. Mikey’s inspiration and desperation drives the boys to overpower Mikey’s older brother Brand (Brolin), who’s been charged by their mother (Mary Ellen Trainor) to keep him inside because of his asthma, and venture off.
The adventure is complicated by the criminal Fratelli gang, with their ferocious ma (Anne Ramsay) and her sons, Jake (Robert Davi), Francis (Joe Pantoliano), and the disfigured, childlike Sloth (John Matuszak), seen initially chained to a chair in front of a television, watching old Errol Flynn movies, fed on scraps and roaring like a monster. The path into Willy’s kingdom begins in the deserted restaurant that the Fratellis, murderous forgers, are using as a hideout, and so the Goonies have to slip past them. Brand has a run-in with Perkins’ son Troy (Steve Antin), a jerk with the advantage of a car, who’s driving about with the flighty but cute Andy Carmichael (Green) and her tart-tongued pal Stef (Plimpton); appalled by Troy’s behaviour, the girls team up with Brand in tracking down the kids but finish up having to flee along with them into the bowels of Willy’s diggings, contending with trapdoors, plunging boulders, and, most memorably, a huge organ made of bones that has to be played correctly to open a door, and if played wrong starts the floor crumbing away. The chief irony of The Goonies’ nostalgic appeal is that it is itself based in nostalgic appeal. There are literal references to the Hardy Boys and old swashbucklers – the score quotes Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s theme for The Adventures of Don Juan (1948) – and spiritual quotes from many more, most especially the Little Rascals and Our Gang in the Goonies themselves with their multi-ethnic fellowship defined by personality quirk rather than creed.
It can be sourly argued that by this time the efforts of the House of Spielberg had moved beyond the honest tributes mixed with real creativity which had made the Indiana Jones films and ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) so good had been supplanted by hoary formula, and that’s true to a large extent, although the leaden exhaustion of that formula that would be apparent by Hook (1991) was not yet nascent. Most specifically, the tropes of Indiana Jones movies – the hunt for hidden treasure following old relics and contending with hostile traps – are cross-bred with the accurately lawless feel for energetic youth seen in ET, with a dash of John Hughes-style teen romantic interaction. But the drama has a primal underpinning. As its young heroes set out on an adventure with the hope of restoring the certainties of their childhood, represented by the threat to their homes and thus their community, they find themselves losing a grip on that childhood; girls are admitted to the boy’s club, sex rears its ugly head, death falls quite literally on them. The goal of the search happens to possess a double-entendre name synonymous with the penis, as the boys evolve into men. Even the puerile edge of Columbus
The film has been criticised for not engaging its young female characters with the same keenness, but it’s worth noting the detail given about the yin-yang pairing of Stef and Andy in the course of the rush of events. Andy, a cheerleader is the designated hottie who is introduced with Troy
Donner’s direction is perfectly pitched for this sort of thing, and there are moments that nag the memory with their visual and emotional concision: Mouth’s angry declamation about claiming back the penny he tossed into the wishing well because of all his dashed dreams; Troy screaming “Andy, you Goonie!” in rage at her abandoning his crass grasping for the new fellowship; the gang’s first glimpse of the pirate ship; Mikey’s kooky identification with One-Eyed Willy, his moments of reverie and psychic war with the long-dead yet still-effectual pirate given a spacey edge by David Grusin’s music; and, of course, Sloth’s much-quoted cry of “Hey you guys!” when leaping into action. Grusin’s score is terrific in general. The rather more trying, excessive elements of the film do however severely hurt The Goonies. Columbus
But the sheer incessant noisiness of the film, whilst compelling for a kid, is hard to take as an adult. The nastiness of the Fratellis is so overstated early on that the kids come across as amazingly dense to keep crossing them, and there’s a certain obnoxious glibness to touches, like Chunk getting stuck and nearly forgotten in a freezer with a cadaver, recur throughout, as if Columbus was just a little too comfortable with suspending the rules of his drama and character relationships, as well as emotional contiguity, for cheap laughs. Gimmicky, rather too cartoonish elements bob up throughout, especially in Data’s gadgets, which sap the filmmaking and derring-do of credibility. It’s hard as a film buff not to smile at the sound effects quotes from Looney Tunes and The Three Stooges, but it’s also sadly predictive of how Columbus
Donner’s attempts to invest the project with real soul only stretch so far; unlike the pop cultural detritus it quotes, The Goonies is too self-satisfied and bludgeoning in its constant rush to get to the good stuff. But the film is canny enough to know that there’s a good reason to recapitulate old stories; there’s always a new generation waiting for the first kiss, the first thrill of real danger, the first sensation of adult responsibility, and ready to understand that appearances aren’t always truth. In its best moments The Goonies genuinely captures the spirit of being a kid and believing anything is possible, and it’s still a highly entertaining ride.
