The Magic That Is The Goonies

Cody Hamman maps out Film Appreciation for the 1985 classic The Goonies.

I was only a year and a half old when the adventure comedy film The Goonies reached theatres in 1985. So, even though the film was primarily aimed at a child audience, I wasn’t exactly in that target audience just yet. I was a bit too young. Luckily, I have two substantially older siblings. My brother is ten years older than me and my sister is thirteen years older than me – so, despite the fact that I was still very young when the ‘80s ended, I got to take in a lot of the ‘80s entertainment that was marketed to teenagers (which was most of it) when that entertainment was still new. I saw the movies the teens were watching, and I have clear memories of my brother watching The Goonies over and over when I was in my toddler era, either through VHS rentals or cable airings.

I don’t remember watching The Goonies with my sister in the ‘80s, but it is one of her favorite movies and even as recently as a few years ago she would put it on any time she saw that it was showing on a cable movie channel.

The titular characters in this movie weren’t my age, they were around the ages of my siblings, but in a way, I grew up with them anyway. Once I was introduced to this movie in the ‘80s, it never lapsed out of my viewing rotation for very long. I purchased a copy of the VHS in the ‘90s, I bought the DVD in the early ‘00s, and now there’s a Blu-ray in my collection. I couldn’t tell you how many times I have watched the movie over the decades, but I can tell you that I have enjoyed it every time – and there have been some special viewings in the mix, like an outdoor screening set up with a home projector, and the time my girlfriend and I showed the movie to her parents. (In Brazil.)

The Goonies themselves are a group of youngsters who live in an area they refer to as the “Goon Docks,” located in picturesque Astoria, Oregon. Unfortunately, the Goon Docks is about to be bulldozed to make way for a country club expansion, so the Goonies may be spending their last days together. In this group, we have Sean Astin as Michael "Mikey" Walsh, who is the kid who is most obviously crushed that they’re losing the Goon Docks; Jeff Cohen as Lawrence "Chunk" Cohen, who is clumsy, treated like a fool, and always hungry for junk food; Corey Feldman as Clark "Mouth" Devereaux, the mouthy jokester of the bunch; and Ke Huy Quan as Richard "Data" Wang, who idolizes James Bond and creates his own gadgets.

The patriarch of the Walsh family is an assistant curator at the local history museum, so there are some interesting items stored in the family’s attic – and when the Goonies discover a map that indicates the treasure belonging to the legendary pirate "One-Eyed Willy" is hidden not too far away, Mikey believes they have found a way to save the Goon Docks. 

Mikey has an older brother, the athletic Brandon "Brand" Walsh (Josh Brolin), who reminded me of my own brother to some degree in the days when he and I were watching the movie together. When Mikey and his pals go on one more Goonie adventure to find the pirate treasure, Brand is sent to retrieve them – and when preppy Troy Perkins (Steve Antin), son of the man who’s buying the Goon Docks, humiliates Brand while riding in a convertible with Brand’s cheerleader crush Andrea Theresa "Andy" Carmichael (Kerri Green, who was also a crush of mine when I was a kid) and Andy’s best friend Stephanie "Stef" Steinbrenner (Martha Plimpton), Andy and Stef ditch Troy and get mixed up in the adventure as well.

The first stop in the treasure hunt is an abandoned restaurant, which is currently occupied by the criminal Fratelli family: Anne Ramsey as Mama Fratelli and Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano as her sons Jake and Francis. The movie begins with a brilliantly designed sequence in which Mama and Francis break Jake out of the local jail and lead the police on a chase, with most of the Goonies being introduced during this sequence as the chase speeds past them. 

The treasure hunt leads the characters on a journey through booby-trapped tunnels beneath the restaurant... but poor Chunk misses out on that part of the adventure. He gets captured by the Fratellis and chained up with the black sheep of their family, John Matuszak as the deformed Sloth, who has a hulking muscular body – but, as it turns out, the mind of a sweet child who loves Baby Ruth candy bars. After interrogating Chunk, the Fratellis also set out to find One-Eyed Willy’s treasure. As if the booby-traps weren’t enough to deal with, now the Goonies have gun-toting criminals on their trail, too.

Producer Steven Spielberg came up with the story for this film, then passed screenwriting duties over to Chris Columbus, who had just written the great horror comedy Gremlins for him. Spielberg then tasked The Omen and Superman director Richard Donner with bringing the story to the screen – and, according to Sean Astin, Spielberg was a very hands-on producer on this movie just as he was on Poltergeist. He was so hands-on, Astin said Donner and Spielberg were "like co-directors."

The result: one of the best, most entertaining kid flicks of the ‘80s. The film was a massive box office success and instantly became a beloved classic for many viewers... and yet, for some reason, there seems to be a bit of backlash against the movie in the internet age, with some folks taking any opportunity to put it down. I don’t understand why, since I have always found The Goonies to be very enjoyable. It tells a cool adventure story and is populated with likeable characters who are fun to spend time with. Over and over again. I will continue to enjoy it, as it will continue to have a place in my regular viewing rotation and it's a movie that can be enjoyed by viewers of any age. I loved it when I was a toddler, I love it now that I'm in my forties, and my girlfriend's parents liked it when they watched it in their seventies.

As of this writing, The Goonies was released about 41 years ago. 15 years ago, almost to the date, I shared a video in which the Creepy Kentuckian from the Deadpit podcast discussed the film, which he counted among his top two or three films of all time. I would have said it in the ‘80s, I would have said it in 2011, and I would say it today: the theme song is right. The Goonies 'R' Good Enough.