Oregon Trail to Treasure

The Goonies

Director: Richard Donner

Cast: Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, Martha Plimpton, Joe Pantoliano, Anne Ramsey

Released: June 7, 1985

Hey, you guys! Goonies never say die! Down here it's our time; it's our time down here! I love this movie so much! It is THE quintessential children's film from the '80s (although there are certain things that aren't quite appropriate for children, but we'll get to those later!), but, to my knowledge, no other movie captured the awesomeness of being a child in the '80s like this one does. Now, this was a little before my time and I didn't see it theaters as I would have been much too young. I actually don't even remember when I first saw it, but it has been awhile since I last saw it (about 15 years) and I was worried that I might not like it since I'm a little older and more mature. But, nope! I loved it! I was laughing so much. Sure, it has its flaws and there are a lot of things that just don't make any sense at all, and sure, I may have had my nostalgia glasses on, but this movie is AWESOME! (Damn, those glasses just won't come off!) Without this movie, we would not have the likes of Super 8 or Stranger Things, which both defintely have elements of The Goonies. It probably shouldn't surprise you that Steven Spielberg was an executive producer on this. I have even told people about this movie who had never seen it and they watched it and they loved it!

This movie is about a group of kids (leader Mikey,  smart-ass Mouth, clumsy Chunk, and innovative Data) who call themselves "The Goonies" and they live in the coastal town of Astoria, Oregon. They live in an area called the Goon Docks, hence their nickname. The movie is set on what is going to be their last weekend together as their homes are being foreclosed and the property will be used to build a golf course and a new country club. (To be honest, I was never clear on whether it was all their homes or just a few of them). A treasure map is found in Mikey's attic and they use it to see if they can find the treasure and save their homes. The four young boys are joined by Mikey's older brother, Brand as well as Brand's crush, Andy, and her friend, Stef. While trying to find the treasure, they run into the criminal Fratelli family who are after them to shut them up about what they saw. And thus the adventure of a lifetime begins!

I thought it would be fun to rank the Goonies in order of my own personal preference. I'll start with my least favorite and work my way up to my favorite:

7.  Andy (played by Kerri Green)

"This isn't like my mother's Steinway!"

Andy is the only "Goonie" I don't like. And I put "Goonie" in quotes because she tells Mikey she's not even a Goonie. She's just there to be the "girl". She's a cheerleader, she wears a short skirt, she has all the boys lusting after her (Brand, Mikey, and Troy all have crushes on her). She's also the one to freak out the most when they're lost in the cave and realizes there may not be a way out. Look, I don't blame her for freaking out...I would probably freak out too, but my god, she's SOOOO annoying! And the way she freaks out is a little disturbing. Let me back up and explain: When we first meet Andy she is riding with Troy in his convertible. Troy is the hotshot jerk athlete (and his dad is the one trying to take all the homes away, so that way you know the entire family is evil). I'm not sure if Troy and Andy are dating, but I'm guessing they are because she's wearing his letter jacket with his name on it and there's a scene where Troy's friends are asking him if he's "made it" with Andy yet and he says no, but he plans to soon. But if they're dating, then why does Brand tell the others that he has a date with Andy? Maybe she's keeping her options open? She seems like one of those girls who always has to have a boyfriend and can't do anything without a man. Ugh! So when she's freaking out, she keeps blabbing on about how she should have let Troy look up her skirt (when she was in his car, he was adjusting his rearview mirror so he could get a better look) and maybe she wouldn't be stuck in this cave as she tells Brand that's the reason she ditched Troy and joined the others. So she's pretty much admitting she would have rather been sexually violated than be in a cave (where there are ways to get out...she was being a little overdramatic). She also keeps going on about what a beautiful body she has and she doesn't want to die before she gets "fat and ugly". Ugh, shut up!

Oh, and it gets worse with her! With every opportunity, she tries to make out with Brand. Now Brand likes her, but even he gets annoyed with her constant goo-goo eyes and always trying to make a pass at him. Once they are safe, and they are no longer being chased by the Fratellis or they are no longer in harm's way, he has no problem kissing her, but there are times she's trying to kiss him that are just not the right time and this happens about three times during the film. There's a scene when they're taking a bathroom break so she and Steph are separated from the rest of the guys and she starts wailing, "Brand! Brand!" in her annoying "help me, I'm just a helpless girl who needs a big strong man" voice. (CAN.NOT.STAND.HER!) Brand tells his brother to see what she's harping about and when he goes over to her, Andy, with her eyes closed, grabs Mikey, thinking he's Brand, and kisses him. My first thought was, How dumb is this girl? Does she not realize that the person she's kissing is the same heigh as her and therefore is not obviously Brand. They do address this when Andy tells Steph to "be careful" because she thinks there's a hole in the area and that "Brand" was standing in it. Okay, I'm glad they thought of something for that, but I still feel like she would have been able to tell she was kissing a twelve-year-old and not a sixteen-year-old. She does tell Stef that it was "weird" (but she still seemed to like it...we got a future cougar on our hands!) and she's confused because she didn't know that Brand wore braces. I mean, really, how stupid is she? Later, when she's kissing Brand she asks him where his braces went (this girl is really so stupid) and that's when she realizes she was making out with a twelve-year-old...because that's what every high school girl dreams of. God, I hate Andy so much. She sucks.

Okay, okay, okay, I will admit she does have one good scene where she is actually helpful in getting the Goonies out of trouble. There's a scene where they have to play certain notes on a piano made out of bones. If the wrong note is hit too many times, a part of the floor falls away and eventually they will all plummet to their death, but each time a right note is struck, a door will open a little at a time. She hits the wrong note quite a few times and with each one exclaims, "This isn't like my mother's Steinway!" or "I'm not Liberace, you know!" Or "I can't tell if it's a B flat or an A sharp!" To which Mikey replies with, "If you hit the wrong note, we'll all be flat!" I just love the look his brother gives him when he says that. But Andy does come through and plays enough right notes that they are able to open the locked door and escape from the Fratellis who are after them at that point.

6.  Brand (played by Josh Brolin)

"I'm gonna hit so you hard that when you wake up, your clothes will be out of style!"

Brand is Mikey's older brother who failed his driver's test, is always exercising, and has a crush on Andy. His taste in girls is terrible, but I guess you can't blame the guy. Albeit annoying, Andy is a pretty and popular cheerleader and always want to make out with him. What sixteen-year-old boy wouldn't like that? He thinks the idea of going after the treasure is dumb, so Mikey and the other Goonies use the spring-y thing (the thing he's holding in the gif) to tie him to the chair and make their escape. Brand was in charge of watching his younger brother and making sure he doesn't go out in the rain so he doesn't get sick. His mom tells him that if his little brother goes out, then he'll (Brand) will be in some serious you-know-what. Brand says, "Sh*t, Mom." His mom tells him not to cuss, but yes, that's what she means. This scene doesn't make any sense because literally seconds after that happens, she sees a mess of chips on the floor and says, "What is that? What is THAT?" Mouth and Chunk think she's referring to the broken statue (I'll get to that later!) and Chunk says, "Oh, sh*t, what?" Mrs. Walsh doesn't even blink that Chunk just cussed and tells the boys she wants the mess cleaned up. I don't know if she was so enraged by the mess that she didn't hear Chunk cuss or if she only dislikes it when her own kids cuss? It was weird.

I love the scene where Troy's dad and this other guy come to the house to remind them about the foreclosure and Troy's dad says, "Is your Mommy home?" and Brand replies with, "No, she's at the market buying Pampers for all us kids." These kids are all twelve and older...why is he asking about their "Mommy"? It's so weird. But that line made me laugh.

Brand goes after the younger boys by stealing Data's little sister's bike (Data and his family live next door) and telling her he "owes her one" (because Mouth let the air out of Brand's bike tires ("Now it's his flattest thing in the world!")) and is seen riding a little girl's bike with training wheels and a flowered basket by Troy, Andy, and Stef in Troy's car. Troy grabs Brand and starts driving really fast and lets go as Brand flies off a cliff. Um, I'm pretty sure Troy just attempted MURDER and anyone who just rode their bike off a cliff would DIE. But we never see how Brand managed to survive it as the next time we see him, he is with Mikey and the others. I honestly have no idea how he even knew where Mikey was, but whatever.

5. Stef (played by Martha Plimpton)

"I feel like I'm baby-sitting, except I'm not getting paid."

Stef is Andy's friend and while she has even less to do than both Andy and Brand, I put her ahead of them because she does have one of my favorite lines in the whole movie which is the one I chose for her quote. That line cracks me up and I've even used it in my real life a couple of times. (Because, really, haven't we all felt at one point or another like we were baby-sitting, but not getting paid?) I also laugh at the scene when the kids have just discovered the pirate ship and she and Mouth (who hate each other) are hugging each other and exclaiming, "Oh my God!" Then she realizes who she's hugging and says, "Oh, God!" in disgust as she pushes him away. That was hilarious. I had forgotten that there was a little crush subplot between Mouth and Stef and that was the reason they hated each other...because they secretly liked each other. This was a little weird because even though Martha Plimpton is only a year older than Corey Feldman in real life, in the movie, she is suppose to be part of the high school group and Mouth is part of the younger group, so why would she like the a young boy? Is she another cougar in the works? At the end of the movie, she tells him, "You know, your voice is kind of nice when your mouth isn't ruining it" after he thanks her for saving his life and he replies, "You know, your looks are kind of pretty when your face isn't ruining it!" OMG, nice line there, kid. Yes, he does say he's just joking, but ouch!

This movie has many Scooby-Doo elements to it and Stef is definitely the Velma of the group (we all know Andy is the Daphne!) just for the mere fact that she is wearing glasses when we first meet her and ends up losing them once they are in the cave and Mikey steps on them and breaks them. ("You broke my glasses!") However, her eyesight must not be that BAD because she seems to see just fine for the rest of their journey.

4. Mikey (played by Sean Astin)

"Goonies never say die!"

Before he was a Notre Dame college football player or a hobbit, thirteen-year-old Sean Astin played Mikey, the asthmatic unofficial leader of the Goonies. It's his idea to find the treasure when all the boys go up to the attic and they're looking through all the "reject" stuff Mr. Walsh, who is the curator at the Astoria museum brought home, because apparently he's allowed to keep it in his attic? Don't ask me how that works. They find a map of the Astoria coastline behind a painting and realize it leads to treasure that was stolen by the pirate One-Eyed Willy. Mikey tells them the story that his dad told him about the infamous pirate and how the British armada was after him and he got trapped in a cave with his men. They set booby traps so nobody could get the treasure and Willy killed all his men so they couldn't escape with the treasure, although apparently one man did escape and thus that's how people know about the treasure and why there's a map. If there was a way to escape, I'm not sure why Willy didn't just sail away with the treasure, but whatever. The way he was telling it, I was sure Sean Astin was reading off of cue cards because for a while he just stares up at something, but I guess Richard Donner told him this story and just had him tell the story based on memory.

It's also Mikey's idea for them to keep going when they're all about to get out of the cave via the well. He gives them that speech where he says, "Down here it's our time! It's our time down here! Up there, it's their time! But down here it's our time!  Don't you see? Don't you get it? The next time we see sky, it will be over another town. The next time we take a test, it will be in another school." I may not have gotten that exactly right, but you get the gist of it. I have to tell you a true story: I remember seeing The Two Towers in theaters and I believe that's the movie where Samwise gives Frodo that speech about...something. I don't remember exactly, but it was a nice, uplifting speech. Anyway, when I first saw that, all I could think of was this speech Sean Astin gives in the Goonies and I kept imagining that he was saying, "It's our time down here! Down here it's our time!"

You have to give L'il Samwise credit, because without him they would have never had their adventure. He's the one who discovers the map that leads to treasure in the attic and he finds the doubloon where he's able to line up the rock, lighthouse, and restaurant and he's the one who first "meets" One-Eyed Willy.

3. Mouth aka Clark (played by Corey Feldman)

"This was my dream, my wish, and it didn't come true. So I'm taking it back. I'm taking them all back."

This kid is such a little sh*t stirrer and never shuts up, hence his nickname of "Mouth". He is an evil little child, but he is hilarious. I get the feeling the others don't like him very much, but they let him be part of their group. We know Stef doesn't care for him and he makes poor Chunk, the chubby kid do the Truffle Shuffle which is a dance where he has to lift his shirt and shake his belly, which Mikey doesn't think is very funny.

Mouth's main attribution to the group is that he is fluent in Spanish, so he is able to decode many of the messages/instructions that are written in Spanish as they make their way to the treasure. This is first set up when Brand and Mikey's mom comes home with an older woman named Rosalita who is going to help them pack because Mrs. Walsh broke her arm and needs help. This really makes no sense because a)They are suppose to move the next day and they are just now packing their house? and b)Why didn't Mrs. Walsh just hire a moving company instead of an older woman? Anyway, since Rosalita doesn't speak any English, Mouth ever so kindly offers to translate for Mrs. Walsh since he knows Spanish. Every time they go to a different room and Mrs. Walsh gives the instructions, Mouth tells her something outrageous and everything is so not appropriate for a children's movie! I am shocked at what they were able to get away with for a children's film in the '80s! I guess it was a much different time back then! In the first room, he tells her that the heroin goes in one drawer, the cocaine goes in another drawer, and the marijuana goes in the last drawer and to make sure to not get the drugs mixed up. When Mrs. Walsh tells Rosalita not to go in the attic, Mouth tells her not to go up there because that's where Mr. Walsh keeps his sexual torture devices. And finally, when Mrs. Walsh is telling her about the broom closet, Mouth tells her that's where she'll be kept without any food or water if she does a bad job. It's so messed up! Mrs. Walsh thanks him and tells him how nice it was for him to translate and he replies with a sweet smile and says, "Nice is my middle name!" Mrs. Walsh also tells Rosalita she wants the house clean before they tear it down, which makes no sense at all...why would someone care about their house being cleaned if it's going to get torn down anyway?

When we are first introduced to Mouth, he comes into the Walsh home ready for the last weekend they will be spending together before they are all separated. He is disappointed they won't be able to do anything fun since Brand flunked his driver's test and they won't have a car and now they won't be "cruising the coast, sniffing some lace, downing some brews." Why is a twelve-year-old talking about drugs and alcohol? Oh, never mind, it is Corey Feldman, after all. Funny how that worked out.

One of my favorite Mouth moments is when clumsy Chunk knocks over this statue of a naked man (I think it's suppose to be a replica of Michaelangelo's David) and the genitals break off. Both Mikey and Brand are freaking out like it shattered into a million pieces instead of one piece just broke off and it would be pretty easy to glue back on. Brand screams "YOU IDIOT!" and Mikey is also upset and tells him, "That's my mom favorite piece!" In reply, Mouth says, "You wouldn't be here if it wasn't" and that just made me laugh...not just what he said, but the way he says it. Both Mikey and Brand yell at him to "SHUT UP!", but I'm on Mouth's side here. I think he had every right to make that stupid crack and honestly I would have done the same thing. Mikey was totally asking for it. First of all, why is he sharing the fact that the penis on the naked male statue is his mom's favorite "part". Who says that? And why does he even know that in the first place? Did his mom tell him that? Is she sexually crazed or something? It's so weird!

Not surprisingly, Mouth's mouth often gets him into trouble. It also almost gets his tongue sliced off! When the four young boys go into the restaurant (that's closed for the season) that lines up with the doubloon, what they don't know is that it's the hideout for the Fratelli family which consists of Mama Fratelli (Anne Ramsey) and her sons Francis (Joe Pantoliano) and Jake (Robert Davi). There's a third son called Sloth that they keep locked in chains downstairs, but we'll get to him later. That enough is to say the Fratellis are horrible people, but Mama and Francis have also broken Jake out of jail and have killed two feds along the way. The fact that they are counterfeiting money seems to be the least offensive thing do.

Mama Fratelli offers the boys water (nasty unclean water!) and asks if they want anything else. The three other boys don't want anything, but Mouth, being Mouth, starts talking in an Italian accent and asks for a bunch of Italian dishes. This prompts Mama to grab him by the face, force his tongue out and tells the kids the only thing they serve is tongue and process to take out a pocket knife and open it up very close to Mouth's face. Now while I don't remember seeing this for the first time, I have no doubt I was covering my mouth with my hand like the three other boys do! And this isn't the only time that Mama Fratelli will threaten to cut off a kid's body part!

I loved the scene when they're all on the water slide (oh, man, how fun did that look?) and when they're coming out of the chute (which was a pretty high drop into the water), Mouth yells, "Ohhhhhhh shhhhhhhhhhhhh*tttttttt!" They must say the s-word at least twenty times in this movie and I'm not exaggerating! And this is a PG movie! I think nowadays you can only get away with using that word once in a PG-rated movie.

2. Data (played by Jonathan Ke Quan)

"That's what I said! Booby trap!"

Data is the Inspector Gadget of the group with all his nifty inventions. Some of them work and some of them don't. Some of them even save his life like the Pinchers of Power (or is it Peril...I'm not quite sure) which is a pair of those plastic clattering teeth attached to a spring coil that he uses to grab hold onto a rock as he's falling hundreds of feet down a pit and the teeth grab the rock right before he is about to get spiked. Don't ask me how that manages to hold a ninety pound kid (well, maybe he's more like eighty pounds because he does say he is the smallest of the group at one point, but still...), but this is a movie and there are many ridiculous things in it. He uses his "slick shoes" to deter the Fratelli brothers who are after them at this point. They're crossing a log over water and Data squirts oil that is in the bottom of his shoes onto the log, thus making it slippery and the two brothers slip on it and land on their groins very painfully. This movie was like a precursor to Home Alone what with all the booby traps that are set (some by Data, some by One-Eyed Willy) and Chris Columbus, who directed Home Alone, wrote this movie. Data also uses the Pinchers to grab Francis in the groin and he has a boxing glove attached to a spring so when he opens his trench coat, it knocks out Jake, but the second time he tries to use it, it malfunctions and he ends up punching himself instead.

Data lives next door to Mikey and uses a zipline to enter the Walsh home. Because of their proximity, he appears to be Mikey's closest friend and they have their arms around each other as they're skipping to the restaurant. It's really quite adorable.

There's a running gag throughout the movie where Data will incorrectly say "boody trap" and one of the kids, usually Mikey, will correct him and he'll reply with, "That's what I said! Booby trap!" Data also refers to himself in the third person.

Even though the actor is originally from Vietnam, I think Data was suppose to be Chinese because at one point, Mikey says they're going so deep into the cave that they might end up in China and Data says, "Ooh, maybe I can visit one of my aunts!"

I mentioned that there are some booby traps set by the famed pirate, One-Eyed Willy. This guy really did not want anyone finding his treasure! I already mentioned the piano made out of bones that Andy plays to open a door. The kids always seem to set off all the booby traps and just narrowly miss getting killed. One that is set off has these huge boulders falling to the ground, about five in a row. Apparently, another set of these was set off as that's how Chester Copperpot, the guy who got the closest to getting to the treasure, was killed. We see a skeleton comically posed under a huge boulder. I mean, I don't know if it was suppose to be funny, but I sure laughed. The only part sticking out from under the rock was the upper body and the head and the rest of the skeleton was crushed underneath the boulder.

1. Chunk aka Lawrence (played by Jeff Cohen)

"Gee, Mister, you're even hungrier than I am!"

Chunk is the chubby, klutzy, scaredy-cat, pathological liar kid who has a much different adventure than the other kids because he gets separated from them. I laughed so hard when we are first introduced to him where he's in a pizza parlor and sees a police chase and excitedly runs up to the window to watch it and smashes his pizza AND his milkshake against the glass (I'm not sure why!), but as you see from the above gif, it gives a very amusing result! This is the first use of the s-word when Chunk exclaims, "Ah, sh*t!" after he ruins his lunch. He has a ridiculous sense of smell. When they're in the basement of the restaurant, he can smell the ice cream in a sealed refrigerator. He is so excited to have all these different flavors of ice cream that he doesn't even notice the DEAD GUY with a bullet through his head that's also in the fridge. ("IT'S A STIFF!") He is a fed the Fratellis killed and Chunk ends up getting stuck in the fridge with him while the other Goonies make their escape. I loved when the corpse is falling onto him and he tells it to, "Stay! Stay!" The other Goonies have escaped down through the firepit, but after Brand and Mikey notice Chunk is missing (glad they didn't make it too far before they realized someone was missing!), they go back up and tell Chunk to run and find the police because they are in "serious sh*t". By this time, it is dark when Chunk goes outside and he keeps telling himself, "I'm not afraid of the dark. I like the dark, I love the dark. But I hate nature! I HATE nature!" He runs out in front of a car and screams, "STOP! I'M JUST A KID!" which cracked me up. When a car does stop, he tells the driver he needs to be taken to the police because he found the hide out of the Fratellis, these disgusting people and that he can describe all three of them. A light comes on and of course it's Jake with Francis in the passenger seat and they grab Chunk and throw him in the back...where there's another dead body. That's some pretty scary stuff right there.

They bring Chunk back to the restaurant and threaten to put his hand in a blender if he doesn't spill the beans and tell them where the other kids are. In a matter of seconds, Chunk gives them all up (I can't blame the kid; I would do the same) and tells them they're down the fireplace, but they don't believe them. Lucky for Chunk, right when they have his hand in the blender and are about to turn it on, this is when the Goonies have come across a bunch of bats that have been let loose when Brand moves a big rock blocking a part of the cave. After we see a bunch of (obviously) fake plastic bats dangling in front of the kids, they all fly up through the fireplace and that's when the Fratellis realize there's a tunnel leading down somewhere.

They throw Chunk in with Sloth, the third Fratelli son. He's this super jacked guy who has a deformed face. It's like his skull didn't quite form properly and he had a droopy face because his eyes don't match up and he has about four teeth. We later learn that his mom may have dropped him "more than one time" when he was a baby, hence his deformity. He's quite scary when you first see him, especially since he screams at Chunk, but then you realize he's just a gentle giant who just wants some chocolate. ("Choc-o-late? Choc-o-late!") I'm pretty sure when I first saw this, I thought they actually found someone who looked like that. No, they used make up to make the actor look like that. Sloth was played by John Matuszak who was a football player for the Oakland Raiders (and Sloth wears a Raiders t-shirt). After Chunk gives Sloth a Baby Ruth candy bar ("Ruth! Ruth! Ruth! Baby Ruth!") they have an unbreakable bond. ("Sloth love Chunk!") Sloth even breaks his chains to retrieve the candy bar that Chunk threw at his head. They start heading after the Fratellis who are now heading after the other Goonies.

Chunk does call the police and tries to tell them about the Fratellis, but the officer doesn't believe him because Chunk has pranked called the police before by telling them that 50 Iranian terrorists took over all the Sizzler steak houses in the city (how many Sizzler restaurant are in Astoria anyway?) and about the creatures that multiply when water is thrown on them, which was obviously a reference to Gremlins which Chris Columbus wrote (remember, he wrote this film) AND Corey Feldman was in as well. At the beginning of the film, the others don't believe Chunk when he tells them about the police chase he just saw. This is because he has lied about Michael Jackson using his bathroom, that he saved a bunch of old people from a nursing home fire, and that he once ate his weight in Godfather's pizza. He admits that MJ didn't use his bathroom...but his sister did! Hmm, I wonder it it was Janet or LaToya?

When the Fratellis have captured the Goonies on the pirate ship, Chunk and Sloth save the day. This is where we get the famous "Heyyyyy youuuuuu guyyyssssssss!" line from Sloth. The scene below I clipped from YouTube, was something I (and I swear to God I'm not even lying) laughed AND cried at the same time. And no, I'm not talking about I was crying so hard because it was funny, no I was laughing at this scene because it was absurd, but I was also crying, because it was so heartwarmingly sweet.  Just watch:

It was just so sweet, BUT, on the other hand, absolutely ridiculous that Chunk would just have this grown man, who obviously has special needs, live with his family without getting his parents' permission first. So that's why I was crying and laughing at the same time.

I don't know how exactly how long the kids were in the cave; I know it was overnight for sure because it's daylight when they get out, but everyone is there to greet them on the beach: their parents, the police, the MEDIA. They act as though these kids have been stuck in the cave for WEEKS. Oh, and even Troy's father shows up to have Mr. Walsh sign the foreclosure papers. However, Rosalita, who is also there, discovers Mikey's marble bag in his jacket (she has his jacket for some reason). The kids had gathered a ton of treasure on the pirate ship, but Mama Fratelli made them all hand it over. However, she missed the marble bag that Mikey had dumped out his marbles and filled with jewels. Rosalita announces the bag of jewels (why didn't she just keep quiet and keep the jewels for herself? She has no loyalty to this family, plus that Mouth kid was a little jerk to her!) and Mr. Walsh rips up the papers even though he has no idea how much these (cheap-looking) jewels are worth. And we will never know because the movie ends with the kids and Sloth watching the pirate ship sailing away (I guess the ghost of One-Eyed Willy is at the helm?) and there was never a sequel.

There are so many things about this movie that don't make any sense:
-What were 17th century pirates doing in the Pacific Northwest?
-If they had found that secret tunnel that Willy and his men built, then what were those very modern pipes doing in there?
-Why are there water slides in this secret tunnel...pretty sure water slides didn't exist in the 17th century!
-How come Mouth was able to enter the house without activating that Rube Goldberg contraption and this was before Chunk arrived and they made him do the Truffle Shuffle before they let him in...and he could have easily unlatched the gate! (Is he just a little dim?)
-Why did the museum let Mr. Walsh keep all that historical stuff in his attic? If they had actually went through all this stuff, they would have found the map that led them to some valuable treasure.
-If nobody was allowed in the attic, then why are those glass orbs with the "laser beams" seemingly plugged in all the time? (I don't know what they're called, but you know what I'm talking about, right?)
-Why did nobody go after the ship at the end? Um, hello, it was filled with rubies, diamonds, gold, silver, coins, you name it!

But even despite all those problems, I still love it. Those nostalgia glasses will never come off! If you are also a fan of The Goonies, I hope you thought this review was, ahem, good enough!

Buckmans v. Bravermans

Parenthood

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Steve Martin, Mary Steenburgen, Dianne Weist, Rick Moranis, Martha Plimpton, Joaquin Phoenix, Jason Robards, Keanu Reeves

Released: August 2, 1989

Oscar nominations:

Best Supporting Actress - Dianne Weist (lost to Brenda Fricker for My Left Foot)

Best Song - "I Love To See You Smile" by Randy Newman (lost to The Little Mermaid for "Under the Sea" by Alan Menken and Howard Shore)

Earlier this year, I watched all five seasons of the TV show Parenthood which is based on this movie. I haven't seen this movie in a very long time that I didn't remember anything about it to compare it to the TV series. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw this movie was when I was a kid so I probably found it really boring because it's mostly about grown ups and their problems...oh, sure, there are kids with their problems, but I'm sure I found that boring too! I find the TV series to be far superior. Of course, they had five seasons to tell different stories and the characters could all have bonding moments with each other. In the movie, they only have less than two hours and you only see the relationships between husbands and wives or mothers and children; you don't really see the relationships between the grown up siblings like the TV show did so well.

It was fun to compare the movie characters with their TV counterparts. So let's compare the Buckmans (from the movie) to the Bravermans (from the TV show)! Gil (Steve Martin) and his wife, Karen (Mary Steenburgen) are the counterparts to Peter Krause's Adam and Monica Potter's Kristina. While in the movie, this family is the main focus, the TV show had enough time to spend on all the families. The main difference are the kids. Gil and Karen's oldest is a nine-year-old boy, Kevin, who has "emotional problems" and needs to attend a different school to get the attention he needs as well as go to therapy. Max, from the TV show, is obviously his counterpart and has been diagnosed with Asperger's. While Max has an older sister, Kevin is the oldest and has two younger siblings, Taylor and Justin who are just there to be annoying and bad child actors. Just like in the TV show, the Buckmans are avid baseball fans and Gil wants Kevin to play on the Little League team even though his son doesn't like it. While watching a game, Gil has a daydream where Kevin is the valedictorian at his college graduation and says, "I'm the happiest, confident, most well-adjusted person in this world. And I owe it all to my dad." That daydream quickly changes, however, after Kevin has dropped the ball and loses the game and everyone is heckling him. He tells his dad, "You made me play second base!" and Gil has another daydream where Kevin is shooting a gun at college students from a bell tower and yells the same line. Yeah, I don't think the studio would be able to get away with a scene like that in this day and age! Perhaps a little too dark. Just like Christina got pregnant in the TV show, Karen also becomes pregnant. When she tells Gil the big news, he's not very excited because he's just quit his job (because they gave a promotion to someone who had been there less years than he had), and worries about money and finances, but in the end everything turns out fine.

Young Wa-keen Feenix!

Then we have the single mother family. Helen Buckman (Dianne Weist) is the sister to Gil. She is divorced and has two teen kids: a sixteen year old daughter named Julie (Martha Plimpton) and a son named Gary (played by a VERY young Joaquin Phoenix...he must have been 13 or 14. In fact, he was so young, he's not credited as Joaquin, but rather by Leaf Phoenix, which I guess was a childhood nickname...thank God he changed it back!). Obviously the TV counterpart of this family is the one with Lauren Graham and Mae Whitman and the boy. I call 2016 the Year of Lauren Graham because not only did I watch Parenthood, but I also watched all of Gilmore Girls and I'm super excited for the revival coming on Netflix in November. Super, super excited! By the way, have you ever noticed that LG's character in Gilmore Girls (who also has the same initials as her portrayer) dated her daughter's high school teacher and LG's character in Parenthood dated her daughter's high school teacher? Anyway, back to the review. Julie moves out of the house with her boyfriend, Todd (Keanu Reeves) and they get married much to Helen's dismay. This was probably my favorite of the family dynamics just because there were so many funny moments. Julie and Todd takes some x-rated photos and when they go to get them after they've been developed, Julie realizes the photos she has are her mothers and her mother has the scandalous photos. You couldn't do a scene like that now since nobody ever gets their photos developed anymore since everything is digital! They get into a huge fight and Julie threatens to move out and Helen tells her if she does that, then she can never step foot in their house again. Once Julie has all her stuff packed and is heading for the door, Helen says, "I'm here if you need me! Call me if you need anything!" After Julie gets into a fight with Todd, she moves back in until Todd comes back and apologizes and they get back together again. There's a funny scene where Todd asks Helen, "Where's my wife?" and Helen tells him, "She's still at school....she has cheerleading practice." That just made me laugh out loud...or LOL as the kids say! (Oh, yeah, did I forget to mention they get married?) The movie father of this family is much more of a douchbag than his TV counterpart. At least in the TV show, he attempted to get to know his kids, but the one in the movie has his own new family and doesn't want anything to do with his kids. There's a sad scene when Gary calls his dad and asks if he can stay with him for a few months, but is denied permission so he breaks into the dental office where his dad works and vandalizes everything. When Helen finds a porno videotape in a sack he's always carrying around (and disguised with a Back to the Future cover), she understands her son needs a man in his life to help answer any questions he has. She asks him if he wants to talk to his Uncle Gil about anything (after she asks him if she can answer any questions he might have) but he doesn't want to. Finally she gets Todd, probably the last person she wants talking to her son. There's a really funny exchange where Todd tells her that Gary got his first boner and asks her, "Do you know what that is?" and she replies, "If memory servers." It's a bit of a running joke that it's been a long time since Helen has any action.

To be honest, I wasn't sure if Nathan (Rick Moranis) or his wife, Susan (Harley Kozak...you may remember her as Jeff Daniel's wife in Arachnophobia), was the Buckman siblings, but after some research, I found out that Susan is the Buckman. I knew this family was the movie counterpart to Julia and Joel. They also have a young daughter, Patty, who is very bright and they teach new things to. Nathan is way more annoying than Joel, though. In fact, I never found Joel to be annoying. Julia was a lot more like Nathan than she is like the more easy going Susan who wants a divorce from Nathan because he is too focused on making sure their daughter is superior than all the other children her age (and he looks down on all his nephews and nieces because they're not as smart as his daughter). Susan wants to have more children, but Nathan says they needs to focus on Patty. She tells him she's leaving him, but he wins her back when he serenades her in front of the middle school class she teaches. There's a scene where Patty is at her cousin's birthday party and Gil is showing all the little kids the thumb trick where it looks like his thumb is being separated (ha, I remember when my friend's dad showed me that and I was completely amazed). I thought for sure Patty was going to tell him how he really did the trick, but instead she screams and runs away. I thought this girl was suppose to be super smart?

Larry (Tom Hulce)'s TV counterpart is Dax Shepard's Crosby. He's a bit of a free spirit and introduces his family to his son, Cool, who's black. The TV show makes a lot more sense where Joy Bryant shows up and introduces Crosby to the son he never knew he had. Here, he just shows up with the kid, who's at least five and says he met his mother who was an exotic dancer and had a one-night stand with her. We never see or hear from the mother. Larry gets into some money problems with gambling and has to get help from his father (Jason Robards). Speaking of the parents, while Papa Buckman has a good amount of scenes, their mother is hardly in the movie so they utilized Bonnie Bedelia in the TV show much more better!

The movie ends at the hospital and we see a woman giving birth, though they don't show who it is. We are suppose to think it's either Karen or Julie, who has announced she and Todd are expecting a child. When the woman and her baby are about to be revealed, the camera pans to all the family members. When you see Karen holding a baby, you think it's Julie, but then you see her standing next to Todd holding a baby. That's when you realize the only person you haven't seen yet is Helen and the man who comes out to announce that the baby is a girl is the man she's dating who is also Gary's biology teacher. It was kind of jarring to see they were having a baby since they had only been on one date, but whatever. I felt like they just did it to surprise the audience because I sure as hell wasn't expecting that. I wished it had just been Julie having the baby and we would have seen a nice moment between her and her mother, but instead they had to go for the surprise ending even though I feel like Helen was too old to be having children by then.

So I think the TV show is much more superior, but like I said, they did have five years of story telling to better flesh out the characters and storylines and I guess the show wouldn't exist without the movie. I do think the kid actors from the TV show are much, MUCH better than the kid actors in the movie. I did wonder why it took so long for them to make a TV show based on the movie because it seemed so perfect for a television series. The movie was released in 1989 and the show didn't start until 2010. Well, imagine my surprise when I found out there was a Parenthood TV show before the one we all know and love with Lauren Graham and Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia and Monica Potter and Dax Shepard and Erika Christensen and Joy Bryant and Peter Krause and Mae Whitman and Ray Romano and Michael B. Jordan (okay, I won't list the entire cast!) and all the others we love. This show came out in 1990 and aired for one season on NBC. (Which also aired the 2010 version...I guess enough time had passed! Or maybe NBC has the rights to it). Instead of giving new names to the characters like they do in the updated version, all of them have the same names, but are just played by different actors (though a couple of the kids came back to play the same role...it's not like they'll be cast in anything else!). Imagine my surprise when I found out Leonardo DiCaprio played Gary. Of course, this was before he was famous so nobody cared. And since they didn't care, they didn't watch. I'm old enough to remember 1990, but I DO NOT remember this Parenthood TV show at all! I didn't know who Leonardo DiCaprio was until 1996. MAYBE 1995...I don't remember, but I definitely didn't know who he was in 1990! I guess the show had decent reviews, but was cancelled because of low ratings...as is the case when shows are cancelled.

Here is the opening credits of the 1990 TV show. I think the song they use is the same one that is used in the movie. It is sung by Randy Newman and it sounds exactly (to my ears, anyway) like the song he sang for Toy Story.  Also, I had no idea Thora Birch (who played the daughter of the Steve Martin Character) was the Cher of her younger years as she only goes by "Thora". Hilarious. What ever happened to Thora Birch? Last time I saw her she played Kevin Spacey's daughter in American Beauty and that's been a long time now!

And because I love it so much, here are the opening credits for the 2010 TV show. I like this song much better before they changed it for the last two seasons...I don't even remember what that song was called or how it went, but I like this one much better: