THE GOONIES (1985)

Lots of residual affection for this Steven Spielberg production.  From his own ‘original’ story (shooting script by Chris Columbus, direction passed off to blandly efficient Richard Donner), this landlocked pirate treasure hunt is a backyard adventure for a gang of misfit suburban kids.  But mostly another attempt by Spielberg in his never-ending quest to recapture that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK mojo, here given the Y.A. treatment.*   Maybe you had to have been there . . . that is, a 12-yr-old boy in 1985.  Donner unable to give the various Rube Goldberg action sequences studding the film Spielberg snap, crackle & pop; while Columbus hardly seems to try.  The likable chubby Jewish kid getting into trouble when he follows the smell of ice cream even though it's inside a freezer?*  A girlfriend unable to detect the guy she’s making out with isn’t tall, hunky boyfriend Josh Brolin, but wheezy kid brother Sean Astin, a foot shorter, forty pounds lighter and wearing braces on his teeth.  Naturally there’s a clueless ditzy mom, but what’s with the Quasimodo routine among the villains?  (Dozens of these careless moves.)  And too many of the stunts, like Brolin’s wild ride on a kiddie bike, simply don’t play.  There is a grand ghost ship for the skeleton pirates; a real ship, not a special effect.  If only Donner could turn himself into Michael Curtiz who made all the Errol Flynn films this is trying so hard to channel.  Instead, Spielberg brings in a sizable slice of actual Erich Wolfgang Korngold music from those old films to try and cover what’s missing.

DOUBLE-BILL/SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Counting this, and his very RAIDERS-like TINTIN movie, how many tries has Spielberg made to date?  Six going on seven?  And only the third, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE/’89, worthy of consideration.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *This kid does get the funniest routine in the pic.  It's actually, a very old vaudeville routine, when the bad guys insist he tell them EVERYTHING or else, he does.  Everything all the way back to third grade.