Panda Palooza

Turning Red

Director: Domee Shi

Voice Talent: Sandra Oh, Rosalie Chiang, Wai Ching Ho

Released: Mach 11, 2022

This movie is Pixar's version of Teen Wolf (but better, though that's not that hard to do!). The main character, thirteen-year-old Toronto native Meilin Lee (voiced by Rosalie Chiang), has to be one the most annoying protagonists in Pixar history. We are supposed to think this as her math teacher calls her, "A very enterprising mildly annoying young lady" (heh) and her nemesis, a fellow student named Tyler calls her, "an overachieving dork-narc." She has an overbearing mother named Ming (voiced by Sandra Oh) who she is always trying to please and she is almost too confident to a fault. She plays the flute and I paused the movie to look at the stickers on her flute case and my favorite one was a drawing of a right angle that said "I'm always right." Heh. It's actually very hard to see unless you pause the movie. 

Her family runs one of the oldest temples in Toronto where they honor their ancestors instead of a god. Their "most revered ancestor", Sun Yee, was "a scholar, poet, and defender of animals." She loved the red panda the most and Mei has a red panda cardboard costume she wears when tourists come to the temple. This will come into play later, but I really don't understand why she needs to dress up in a red panda costume.

Mei has a close group of friends that include Miriam, Priya, and Abby. I liked Miriam and Priya, but I found Abby (the one in purple) to be a bit annoying as she tends to shout a lot. The movie is quick to show us that these girls are boy-crazy teeny boppers (does anyone still even use that word anymore?) After school, they stop by the Daisy Mart, a convenience store, and they're all peering in through the front window (looking super obvious, btw), oogling over Devon, the seventeen-year-old who runs the cash register. Heh, I have to wonder if he was named after Canadian actor Devon Sawa who all the pre-teen girls loved in the '90s. All the girls are googling over Devon except for Mei. She is not impressed. She reminds her friend what "real men look like" and shows them the cover of her Tween Beat magazine which features 4*Town, the "Hottest Band of the Year" (and has five members, despite their name). They are a little bit BSB, a little bit N'Sync, a little bit One Direction, a little bit BTS. 

All the girls love 4*Town, but Mei may be the most ga-ga over them. I laughed over her introduction of the band to the viewers:  "Jesse went to art school. Tae Young fosters injured doves. Robaire speaks French. And Aaron T. and Aaron Z. are like, really talented, too." Bwah! I love the brush off of the two Aarons. Do you think they are the Chris Kirkpatrick/Louis Tomlinson of 4*Town? (Yes, I had to look up their names). Also, when did Jesse have time to go to art school? I'm not sure how old the members are supposed to be, but I'm guessing 16/17. This teenager who is in a superstar pop group has attended art school? Huh? Mei is the most infatuated with Robaire who is the Justin Timberlake/Harry Styles of the group.

Mei's mother is the more dominant of the parents, so her father is more in the background, but we do get to see him shine when we see him cooking dinner. This is an amazing scene that makes me feel like I'm watching an episode of Top Chef. (Ooh, now I want a Top Chef Pixar-style show with Mei's dad, Remi from Ratatouille, the guy who makes pasta in Luca, uh, who are some other chefs/cooks in Pixar history?) Lettuce is being chopped, oil is being poured into a pan, peppers are being tossed in said pan, dumplings are cooking in boiling water. None of this is even real, but the animation is so beautiful and amazing and realistic that it looks real and it makes me so hungry! I could really go for some dumplings right now. 

While watching TV, a commercial for the 4*Town concert comes on to announce that the tickets for their North American tour are on sale now. Ming doesn't get this group and is just shaking her head in disgust. Obviously Mei has never told her mom she likes this group even though you think Ming would pick up on this since she gets super excited when the commercial comes on. She tells her mom that she knows some of the kids at school like them, but because she wants her mother's approval, she doesn't tell her that she likes them too. (Obsessed with them is more like it!)

While doing math homework in her room (and listening to 4*Town on her headphones), Mei starts doodling a picture of a boy in her notebook. I assumed it was supposed to be one the members of 4*Town, but then she notices it "kinda looks like Devon." She draws a "sexy" picture of him, then rolls under her bed with her notebook and pencil and starts drawing more pictures, my favorite being Devon as a merman. Hilarious. When her mom knocks on the door to bring her a snack, she panics and quickly rolls out from under the bed and jumps on her bed, trying to be casual. In the haste, she had knocked her notebook out from under the bed so half of it is visible. She tells herself to be cool and not look at the notebook and attract any attention to it, but of course she does and her mom follows her gaze and sees it. She picks it up, thinking it's Mei homework and wanting to check it.

Now I find Mei to be extremely annoying, but there were times when I felt for her and this was one of those times. Her mother sees the "sexy" drawings of this boy, one of them being him holding a lovestruck Mei in his arms. There's honestly nothing that scandalous or predatory about these pics, but Ming doesn't see it that way. She is outraged and asks Mei if this boy did these things to her. The only picture we actually see where Mei is also in them is the one where we're shown so I have no idea what other things she drew. Ming immediately recognizes him as "the sketchy clerk from the Daisy Mart" because of his distinct hat. The next thing Mei knows, her mom has driven her to the conveniance store and she marches inside where she rips Devon a new one. Mei barely even has time to try to explain anything and even if she did, it's clear her mother isn't listening. Her mother definitely overreacted. I'm not even sure if this is the worst thing she does in the movie or another scene in the movie. Oh, and there is anther scene toward the end which is pretty bad. Oh, and one before that. Heh, even though Ming may mean well, she does some pretty embarrassing and unforgiving things to her daughter. 

In the scene where Ming is shredding Devon to pieces, I don't know who I feel worse for: Devon or Mei. Devon is being accused of things he's never done, but a bunch of other kids are there to witness this, including Tyler. Mei's mother has even brought the drawings which she slams down right in front of Devon as she falsely accuses him of taking advantage of her daughter. Everyone sees these and just start howling with laughter. Oh, man. Poor Mei. How absolutely mortifying. To make things worse, the next day at school, she will find these drawings all over because Tyler took them and posted them all over the school corridors. I don't know why Mei just didn't grab the drawings before she left, but maybe she just wanted to get out of there.

So this whole episode is the catalyst for what is about to happen the next day. She wakes up as a red panda the next morning. Now she's still her regular size (perhaps a little taller), but is just now a red panda. Red pandas are pretty small; about 20-25 inches long (thank you, Google), so it's not like she's the size of an actual red panda because than she would be much smaller. 

When she walks into the bathroom (and there is a pretty amusing shot where we see Panda Mei walking across the hall from her bedroom to the bathroom while her parents are at the kitchen table reading the paper and if they had looked up, they would have seen her (and had quite the surprise!). It's when she sleepily glances at herself in the mirror that she sees something is awry. But don't you think you would notice you were a giant fluffy red panda even before you saw yourself in the mirror. I would imagine having all that fur on your body and having a tail would just feel different and you would just know you weren't yourself. (Not to mention she could just glance at her hands, er paws). But this is a trope that's been done in Teen Wolf or Big or 13 Going on 30 or any body morphing movie. 

When she sees herself, she screams and shuts the door and her parents are concerned. Ming knocks on the door, asking if she's okay, thinking Mei might be sick. I got Christina Yang vibes when she asks, "Is it a fever? A stomach ache? Chills? Constipation?" Then she asks her if, "the red peony bloomed." OMG. Ewww. That's way too visual! Before I saw this movie, I had heard that her turning into a red panda was a metaphor for her getting her period (eh, I must have heard wrong because that's not exactly what it is), but I thought it was gonna be more discreet than what it turns out to be. Mei denies that she has her period, then quickly changes her mind and says, "Maybe" in order to explain her odd behavior. Ming thinks it is too soon (what is she talking about? Her daughter is 13! Most girls get it by then, if not even earlier!). She tells Mei she'll get her everything she needs and comes back later with everything she needs (if you didn't get the "red peony blooming", it's pretty obvious now with the supplies she brings). She just straight up barges into the bathroom without knocking first. So not cool. Honestly, I'm surprised she even knocked when Mei was doodling under the bed. Before her mom can see her, Mei has just enough tie to hide behind the shower curtain. I'm surprised Ming couldn't smell her since we saw Panda Mei take a whiff of herself earlier and made a face. 

Mei screams at her mom to get out, then feels bad for yelling at her mom and tells her she didn't mean it. She starts crying, declaring she is "a gross red monster" (don't we (females) all feel like that around that time of the month? I know there's nothing I'd rather do than just hibernate in my room wishing for death). Her mother is trying to comfort her, telling her it's not that bad. We see her hand reach for the shower curtain and she starts to pull it back to reveal Panda Mei, but then she becomes distracted by something burning on the stove and runs to the kitchen. 

So just for a second, I thought that maybe Mei didn't really turn into a red panda, that she just saw herself as one and everyone else would see her as her usual self, but no, she is legit a red panda in this.

Panda Mei scurries back to her room where she decides if she just goes back to sleep, then she will wake up as her normal self, as though she's convincing herself that she's just dreaming. She takes a couple of deep breaths and her panda ears vanish; she takes a couple more breaths and she's back to her normal self. The only difference now is that her hair is red instead of black; to match her newly acquired red panda fur. The second she excitedly exclaims, "Yes!", she turns back into a panda. It doesn't take her long to realize that when she gets worked up with emotion, she turns into a panda. 

Her mom drives her to school and Mei talks like a zombie, telling her everything is fine. She wears a beanie (or toque, to Canadians) to hide her red hair.  Her school is called Lester R. Pearson Middle School and I admit, I had to Google that name to see who he was. He was the 14th Prime Minister of Canada and served from 1963-1968. This is very interesting because I recently found out that the Canadian flag that we're all familiar with today wasn't the national flag of Canada until 1965! That shocked me because that's really not all that long ago. The flag they used to have was red with the Union Jack in the upper left corner (which is usually called the canton) and Canada's Coat of Arms on the right side of the flag. The Coat of Arms changed a few times. There's a lot of red space on this flag. Look, I understand they had the Union Jack on their flag because it's part of the Commonwealth, but their old flag was....not that great. You can see what it looked like (and the different variations of the Coat of Arms) in this link. It was Prime Minister Pearson who proposed Canada would have a new flag while he was in office, and he was right. Anyway, long story short, there was a few candidates for the new purposed Canadian flag (some just as bad as the old flag because they weren't all the different) and the maple leaf flag was the one that was chosen, as we all know. So Canada went from having a meh flag to one of the most iconic and well-known flags in the world. Smart move, Canada. Bet you weren't expecting a little history lesson! 

When Mei walks into school trying not to get overexcited by anything, her friends come up to her and tell her they know what happened last night at the Daisy Mart. Basically, Tyler told them that her mom went nuts and that she's kind of a perv. Heh. At first, she starts to (naturally) get angry, but she's able to calm herself down before she morphs into a big red panda. She just tells her friends that there was a misunderstanding. This is when she sees Tyler putting up the pictures she drew and she declares she's gonna kill him. She's not able to keep her anger in check because she notices one of her hands turns into a fluffy red paw, then she gets a fluffy red tail under her skirt which she is trying to hide, but to no avail. 

She is able to run to her math class without anyone seeing her tail and is able to calm down as she enjoys math and can just relax and learn. And everything seems to be going well until she sees her mom is outside looking super shady as she's hiding behind a tree and peering out around it. A security guard comes up to her and tells her she can't be there and she should go to the front office. (Which begs the question, why IS she standing outside the window?) We find out that Mei forgot her pads (probably because she doesn't actually have her period) and Ming lifts up the box, waving them so everybody can see. At this point, everyone in the classroom is looking out the window so they don't notice when Mei turns into a red panda. The only one who does see this is Ming. I get that they have Ming coming to the window and trying to get Mei's attention to to give her the pads so Mei will get super embarrassed and turn into a panda, but I don't understand Ming's reasoning in this at all. Why didn't she just put the pads in a paper sack, go to the front office, tell them her daughter forgot something important and make sure she got it, then they could have called Mei to the office and given her the paper bag. There. Problem solved. But yeah, I know, we need it to progress the plot forward. 

Mei the panda runs out before anyone can see her. She hides in a bathroom stall and when she walks out of the stall, she runs into a blonde girl who was giving me serious Quinn from Daria vibes (heh, if you ever watched that show). Panda Mei runs out of the school and runs all the way home basically destroying whatever she runs across. 

While following/chasing Panda Mei though the city, Ming calls her husband to tell him there's been an emergency with their daughter who she finds in her room when she returns home. Her mother is trying to comfort her and when her dad comes in and sees her daughter as a red panda, he asks, "It's happened already?" This stops Mei from crying and she asks, "What did you say?" (Oh, and in case if it wasn't clear; Mei is able to speak when she's a panda). Ming tells her that their ancestor, Sun Yee, had "a mystical connection with red pandas" and asked the god to turn her into one and she got her wish. She passed this down to her daughters when they "came of age" and they passed it to their daughters and so on. Ah, the family curse. 

However, there is good news because Ming tells her there's a cure. She knows this because it happened to her. Mei asks her mom why she didn't warn her about it, which I think is a pretty valid question. Her mom tells her she thought she had more time. To get rid of the panda, she'll have to undergo a ritual at the next red moon that will seal her red panda spirit. She shows Mei the necklace she's wearing which has her panda spirit sealed in it. I don't know, I feel like it would be better to keep that tucked away in a jewelry box than wearing it because you never know if that thing might break or something....just saying. Of course, I'm probably just saying this in hindsight as I've already seen the movie and know what happens. Ming warns her daughter that any strong emotions will release the panda and the more the panda is released, the more difficult the ritual will be and she only has one chance to banish it. Mei is dismayed when the next red moon won't be until May 25th, which is nearly a month away. 

The next morning, her friends come to her bedroom window (her room is on the first floor) to check on her. As fas as they know, Mei ran away because her mother embarrassed her by bringing pads. I love how one of her friends asks her, "You need more pads? I brought extra." Mei, in panda form, is hidden from the window so they don't see her. However she forgets she's a panda when Abby announces, "4*Town's coming to Toronto!" (Of course 4*Town is coming to Toronto! They just announced their North American tour and Toronto is the biggest city in Canada). Panda Mei appears in the window, excitedly exclaiming, "What?!" Her friends scream and she pulls all three of them in through the window (strong panda!) and tells them to be quiet and they oblige. She explains her red panda form as some "inconvenient genetic thingy [she] got from [her] mom." 

Her friends tell her 4*Town is coming May 18th and this upsets Mei even more because she'll still have her panda powers. Her friends make her feel better by singing a 4*Town song ("I never met nobody like you....") and she changes back to a girl. She explains to her friends that she only changes into a red panda when she gets too excited, so Abby pinches her and Mei gets mad, but she doesn't change into a panda. When she asks Abby to hit her (and she gives her a pretty good smack!) and still doesn't change into a panda, she realizes that being around her friends calms her down and neutralizes the panda. They all realize this means that Mei can attend the concert after all so that night they all decide they're going to ask their parents if they can attend the concert.

Mei tells her parents she think she's made a breakthrough and she goes through a test where they attempt to bring up sore subjects to see if she can control her emotions and not turn into a panda. This includes deforestation, a picture of a sad orangutan, and her second place spelling bee trophy. But it's not just negative emotions that turn her into a panda, it's also feelings of euphoria, so the last test is a boxful of adorable kittens and at first Mei can't control her excitement (hell, neither could I!), but then she thinks of her friends and is able to remain calm. Her mom asks her how she is able to control her panda and she replies, "When I start to get emotional, all I do is imagine the people I love most in the world." Of course Ming thinks she's talking about her and Mei confirms this so as not to hurt her mother's feelings. 

She asks her parents about the concert and her mom replies, "absolutely not." She doesn't think Mei will be able to stay calm and will get too excited at the concert. I have to agree with Ming here. In fact, we see Mei daydreaming about attending the concert with her friends and they're all screaming their heads off and going crazy. There's no way she would not get excited even with her friends around. However, even if there wasn't the whole panda business thing going on, Ming still would have told her no. After Mei goes to her room in a huff, Ming is venting to her husband. She doesn't understand why a ticket costs $200. "Who do they think they are? Celine Dion?" Heh. 

The next day we find out the other girls can't go to the concert either. One of them says her parents says she can go when she's 30, another one's parents called it "stripper music" (heh) and the third girl's parents said yes, but she has to buy her own ticket. The girls decide they're gonna go to the concert and will just tell their parents they're sleeping over at Miriam's house. I'm pretty sure she was the one who said her parents would let go to the concert as long as she paid for the ticket, so maybe her plan is to tell her parents the other girls are also allowed to go? :::shrug:::

As they're thinking of ways to make money, Abby asks Mei to turn into the panda because she wants a "hit". They're in the girl's bathroom and after Mei turns into the panda, the door opens and a few girls walk in, including the bubbly blonde girl who saw the panda the other day. I love that she has butterfly clips in her hair because I used to do that (only a couple times, though, cuz it took forever) back in the late '90s/early 2000s. All the girls are in love with the panda and think it's "the cutest thing ever!" and this is how Mei and her friends realize how much people love the panda and they can take advantage of that by having people pay to take pictures with the panda as well as receive hugs from the panda and buy panda paraphernalia. Mei tells her mom that she's joined the Mathletes (you'd think she was already a part of that club) to have an excuse for not being home after school. We get a montage of kids waiting in line outside the classroom where Mei and her friends have established their business (they never make any mention if any teachers know what's going on) as Abby collects money from them before they get a Panda picture or buy t-shirts or key chains. Hell, they even sell red panda tails. They also never mention where they get the money to buy their merch. I guess from their own stash. When one of Mei's friends sees Ming approaching with snacks, she warns everyone and the girls turn the room into a regular classroom where it looks like they're studying math. 

The concert is only a few days away and the girls are still $100 short. They're discussing this while sitting on the bleachers watching some boys run track. The girls are "whoo hooing" the boys (that sounds really dirty, especially if you play The Sims!) and Mei even shouts at one of them, "Are you a triangle? Cuz you acute." Oh, God, that is so cringe. I can't see any thirteen-year-old girl (any age, really) saying something so lame and embarrassing unless they were really that un-self-aware, which Mei may be. Tyler is under the bleachers and is ready to blackmail Mei. He asks Mei if her mom knows she's been "flaunting the panda all over school." He's having a birthday party and wants Mei to be there as the panda so it will be "epic". It's the day before the concert and she agrees if he'll pay her $200 and once he agrees to that, she tells him she'll only be the panda for an hour. Look, I know Tyler is a little sh*t, but Mei can't stay for a couple hours? Also, when do the girls plan on buying their tickets? I feel like all the tickets would be sold out now, but maybe things were different in 2002. Oh, have I mentioned this movie takes place in 2002? I don't think I have because it hasn't organically come up. 

I was confused during the scene when Mei is heading to Tyler's house for his birthday party. She tells her parents she's going to a meeting of the Mathletes, but isn't that right after school? I understand that Tyler's party is probably later in the evening, around seven, but why not just tell your mom you're going to one of your friends' house. Or just stay after school and call her from there and tell her you're going somewhere with your friends. I don't know! But I guess we need to have it this way because when she tells her parents this, her mom insists that she joins, which is just super weird to me. 

Earlier in the movie, Ming had gotten a call from her own mother, Wu, (who's retired in Florida) who had seen the news coverage of a red panda wrecking havoc around Toronto, so she knew exactly what was up. She had told Ming she was coming "with reinforcements" because she doesn't think Ming can handle Mei and her panda. And sure enough, as Mei and Ming are walking outside, Mei's grandmother and aunts (four of them) have arrived. Now Mei definitely can't go to Tyler's (not sure how she was planning on ditching her mom if her relatives hadn't shown up) because she needs to stay to open presents and eat and chat about the panda. While all this is going on, we get a small scene over at Tyler's house where everyone is sitting in the living room (boys on one side, girls on the other side) looking bored and awkward. Tyler, of course, is pretty irked.

Mei feigns being tired, then hurries to her room where she puts stuffed animals under her bed (honestly, does that even work in real life? That's such a cliche in movies and TV shows), but before she can escape out her window, her grandma comes into her room to have a little chat with her. She tells Mei she knows she's been changing into the panda because she found a tuft of red fur. She knows "it feels so good to let the beast out, so free", but warns her granddaughter that each time she does, it will get stronger and she'll be bound to it forever and the "ritual will fail." She says she and Mei's mother were once close (you can tell their relationship is a bit strained now), but the panda took it away. Wu has a scar above her left eye, so obviously she was attacked by Ming when she was in panda form. She tells Mei there can be no more panda because she is "[her] mother's whole world." Now while Wu is having this conversation with her granddaughter, is it interesting that she doesn't seem to notice that there is obviously something stuffed under her covers! 

After Wu leaves her room, Mei still sneaks out. She takes her grandmother's advice and shows up to Tyler's house in the cardboard red panda costume that we saw earlier in the movie and I mentioned would come back. So here it is. Everyone is disappointed and Tyler's angry. He tells Mei he wants his money back since he's paying for the real panda and "not this garbage." 

Her friends take her aside and she tells them she can't turn into the panda anymore (but doesn't explain why). They are understanding and each one starts sacrificing their spot at the concert (remember, they only have enough money for three tickets). Finally, Miriam (rationally) says, "If we can't all go, then none of us should go." The four friends are really sad and disappointed and a frustrated Mei says to herself, "just one last time" as she turns into the panda. This immediately livens up the party and we get a montage of everyone partying with the panda set to "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child. "Kelly, can you handle this? Michelle, can you handle this? Beyonce, can you handle this? I don't think they can handle this. Whoooo!" It's panda-monium! Yes, you may groan at my awful pun. 

Back at the Lee household, Ming goes to check on Mei and when she opens her bedroom door, the first thing she notices is that the window is open. Rookie mistake. You would think the next thing she would notice would be the stuffed animals under the covers, but it's the red panda merch that's sticking out from under the bed. (Mei really does a terrible job of hiding things). She looks under the bed and sees the money and all the evidence of what they've been up to. She also notices the flyer for Tyler's party so she knows where she is. 

But before Ming is about to show up, we get a scene of the four girls on top of Tyler's roof after Panda Mei giving panda rides and shaking her panda booty to "Bootylicious" and what not. They're excitedly talking about the concert they now have enough money for all of them to attend. So I haven't mentioned yet that Mei has a Tamagotchi. You always see it with her, but it's never really a huge plot point...until a little bit later. I remember them being a huge thing in the late 90s. I never had one because I was a little too old for them...plus, honestly, I didn't see the appeal of them. I feel like they would be fun at first, but would get boring after awhile. Anyway, Mei has named her Tamagotchi "Robaire Jr" and she tells it, "You're gonna meet your daddy." Oh, dear God, these girls are so cringe. And so thirsty. Look, I've had my celebrity crushes (Diego Luna has an open invitation to teach me Spanish anytime), but boyband crushes just seems so low-brow. :::Scoffs:::: 

They talk about Mei's upcoming ritual and Miriam asks her what if she kept the panda instead of doing the ritual. Her friends like how the panda has changed her, how she's more rebellious. They start calling each other and everything "da bomb" which cracked me up because I remember using that phrase in the early 2000s. 

There's a portable radio with them on the roof and we hear the DJ announce that 4*Town is coming to Toronto on the 25th, NOT the next day. Ruh-roh. Who didn't see that coming? Mei starts freaking out since that's also the day of the ritual and Abby tries to calm her down because she is sure the DJ is wrong. She gets out the magazine insert with the cities and tour dates listed on it, and sure enough, they are coming to Toronto on the 25th. It's Toledo where they'll be tomorrow. I can't believe she got the date of her favorite band coming to her own town wrong! You would think one of the other three would double check this as well. 

Because of this, Mei is already in a pretty pissy mood, but she becomes even more agitated when Tyler tells her she needs to get back to work (apparently her hour wasn't up) and she turns into the panda and almost ends up attacking him. By this time, Ming has arrived and sees what's going on. Tyler's parents are furious and she has to apologize for her daughter. After his parents tell everyone to go home, Ming walks right past Mei (who is expecting her mother to yell at her) and right up to her three friends and tells them, "I can't believe you girls would use her like this." She then proceeds to accuse all of them of putting thoughts into Mei's head and now she's "lying and sneaking out." She also blames them for using her to get the money for the concert tickets and doesn't believe that her daughter likes this group of "tacky delinquents." (Ouch, sick burn, Ming!) She concludes that her daughter is "a good girl and [they've] taken advantage of her." When her friends expectantly look at Mei to get her to tell her mom the truth, she says nothing and seeks comfort from her mom, Damn, that's cold. You suck, Mei. 

A week passes and we see Mei's three friends without her at the concert purchasing their tickets. Mei is eating dinner with her family and will soon be getting ready for the ritual to rid of the panda. She has a heart to heart with her dad and he asks if her mom has ever told her about her panda, but Mei says she hasn't; that she won't talk about it. Her father tells her that Ming's panda was "destructive" and "big" (and he ain't lying!) and that he only saw it once when she and her mother had a terrible fight over him because Wu didn't approve of him. (Don't get too much of that backstory, but I guess it explains why the relationship between Ming and Wu is a bit strained). 

The ritual involves Mei sitting inside a large circle that's been drawn with chalk and her aunts chanting in Cantonese. Apparently, the doors to the realm Mei needs to get into will only open if people are singing from their hearts. We find out it doesn't even matter what's being sung (a little foreshadowing there). At the last minute, Mei decides she wants to keep her panda form and breaks the ritual as she runs away to the concert. Ming tries to hold her back from escaping, but Mei throws her back and Ming's necklace (containing her panda spirit) ends up cracking. Gee, I wonder what ever will happen. Oh, look, her panda spirit is swirling around her. I think she's about to become a (big and destructive) red panda! 

Mei transforms between girl and red panda as she traverses through Toronto to the SkyDome (I guess it's called Rogers Centre now) and she's swinging through buildings and falling and flying like she's Spider-(wo)man or something. I love how she just free falls in through the stadium as the red panda and lands on her feet as herself pretty much right in front of her friends, who are pretty quick to accept her apology. She tells them she didn't say anything to her mother because she didn't want to disappoint her mother, but the thought of losing her friends made her feel even worse. Eh, I don't know. If I were her friend, I would have have given her the cold shoulder a little bit longer. She was touched because apparently, she had left her Tamagotchi at Tyler's and Miriam had been taking care of it so it wouldn't die. (So did you have to buy a new one if it died? Cuz if so, I bet those "died" pretty often so they would make you spend more money to buy another one!) 

Speaking of Tyler, they spot him in the crowd and they're excited he's a "4*Townie" and pretty much immediately accept him. Um, okay, sure. This is only the kid who humiliated Mei by posting those drawings she did of "Dreamy Devon" all over the school and blackmailing her to make her perform at his party. 

So the concert starts and the five boy band members are all dressed in white with angel wings (oh man, it's so hilarious) and everyone is going wild and the girls, especially Mei, look like they're about to faint. Mei is even close to touching Robaire when her mom, as the "big and destructive" red panda comes over to wreck things. And when I say "wreck", I mean that literally! You know how big Godzilla or the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters was? Ming's red panda is about that size too. And I thought Mei's red panda was big for a red panda! I don't know why Ming's panda was so freakin' huge! The 4*Town members, "flying" over the stage with wires look pretty terrified when they see this huge Godzilla panda stomping toward them and it's pretty hilarious. 

Ming is hollering at everyone to go home and everyone goes running because they don't want to be squished by a huge red panda and they're all pretty pissed that the concert has been ruined. (And let's remember, only the first song of the show was being sung when Giant (red) Panda Ming showed up. 

Luckily Mei's dad, grandma, and aunts have all showed up to help stop Ming. They need to perform the ritual on her so she can rid of her panda. None of them are strong enough to contain her, so Wu and her daughters break their jewelry that contain their pandas to help Mei (who is also in her panda form). These pandas must have some super strength because they're able to contain Panda Ming in the huge chalk circle Mei's dad has drawn. Mei's friends have gotten 4*Town to sing (remember, I said this would come back) so the ritual will work and Ming (and Wu and the aunties) are able to banish their pandas, but Mei keeps hers. So perhaps we'll see a sequel (or more) in the future. 

In the epilogue, Mei tells us that "people still talk about Pandapocalypse of 2002" and that Ming's panda is now housed in Mei's Tamagotchi and her Grandma's panda is in a 4*Town plastic pendant. God, how embarrassing!

They are raising money for the ruined SkyDome, so now Mei can actually turn into a red panda at their temple and they make money by taking pics and selling merch. (Sounds familiar!) Their goal is 100 million and they only have $10,000 so far. Oh, boy.

Here is a picture of the director (Domee Shi) with a red panda at the San Francisco zoo. How cute is that? 

A Slice of Heaven

Mystic Pizza

Director: Donald Petrie

Cast: Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish, Lili Taylor, Vincent D'Onofrio, Conchata Ferrell

Released: October 21, 1988

This is a movie that follows three Portuguese-American teen girls in the town of Mystic, Connecticut. Julia Roberts, Annabeth Gish, and Lili Taylor play Daisy, Kat, and Jojo, respectively. I'm pretty sure none of them are of Portuguese descent and only Annabeth Gish was a teenager when they filmed this. She was 17, Julia Roberts was 20, Lily Taylor was 21; so at least they were close to being teens. They don't really say how old the girls are supposed to be; it's just that the Netflix description said they were teens. Daisy and Kat are sisters and Jojo is their friend. 

The movie follows the love lives of these three young women as well as their job at the Mystic Pizza where they all work as waitresses and wear different colored shirts that have a picture of a slice of pizza and the restaurant's motto which is "A slice of heaven." So I know there is an actual Mystic Pizza in the Connecticut town, but what I didn't know is that it existed before the movie and that's where the director got the idea for the film. I have a feeling the inside doesn't even look the same as the restaurant in the movie or if it's even in the same location, but I can assume it's a tourist trap! 

Kat is planning to attend Yale next semester after she's saved up money to pay for tuition. She plan to major in astronomy. She was offered a part scholarship and will be starting in February. This movie appears to start in late summer/early fall. She already has two jobs, including working at Mystic Pizza and at the planetarium, and is planning on getting another job. She has an interview to be a baby-sitter/nanny for a four-year-old girl named Phoebe while her dad, Tim, renovates a house from the 1880s. His wife is in England for something, I don't know, the point is they need her out of the country. When Kat meets Tim, she tells him how she's planning on studying astronomy when she attends Yale and he tells her he also went to Yale and graduated in '79 and he met his wife there. While there, the shy Phoebe seems to open up to Kat who reads her a story while Tim is on the phone. Tim is impressed by her (in more ways that one, we'll soon later find out!) and she tells him she's been baby-sitting for another family since she was nine. Um, does that seem young to anyone else to be baby-sitting? I would never hire a nine-year-old to baby-sit my kids. You're still an effin' kid when you're nine! So Tim hires Kat to be Phoebe's baby-sitter and here is our most icky relationship of the movie. Keep in mind that Kat is about to attend college soon, so she's probably 17 or 18. Tim has to be in his early 30s. For a 30-year-old guy (and one that's married with a kid, mind you) to be falling for his kid's teen nanny, ewww, it just makes me feel gross all over. I mean, they don't make it as Tim is some predatory creep who is coming on to Kat; she is very much having the same feelings for him as well even though she knows he's married with a kid and has a good decade on her. I guess she's attracted to him because he's an intellect. I guess this is shown by the huge, unattractive glasses he wears. We see Tim and Phoebe go to the planetarium where Kat is giving a lecture. When Kat sees them come in, she locks eyes with Tim and starts to stutter during her speech. Smooth, Kat. 

There's a super awkward scene where Kat is helping Phoebe get ready for bed and the girl mentions her mom lives in England. Kat assures her that her mom is only working there and she'll be home in a few weeks. Phoebe says, "I know. We're not getting a divorce." It's so weird and it's almost like the girl is telling Kat to back off, but of course she wouldn't know anything about her dad's and Kat's budding relationship; it's not like they haven't done anything except talk in front of the girl. And at this point, they haven't even kissed; there's just been some very mild flirting.Tim has come home at that point and starts to read Phoebe a bedtime story as Kat is getting ready to go home. He's only been reading to his daughter for five seconds when he comes down the stairs before Kat has left and gives her the sweater (the one he was wearing) because he doesn't want her to get cold (she's wearing a polo shirt). A couple of things:

1) Why didn't Kat bring a sweater or jacket with her? I think by this time, it's around September so the days are still warm enough you don't need long sleeves, but I'm sure by the time the sun goes down, it gets a little chilly. She knew she would be leaving when it was dark outside, so surely she knew it would be cold by then! 

2) But really, my main issue is why did Tim have to take off the sweater off his back to give to her? Why not just give her a sweater/jacket from his closet or dresser? It's like, oh, here, let me take off this ugly brown fair isle sweater so you can smell my manly odor since I've been wearing it all day. Ugh... but she takes it and puts it on and they share a moment looking into each other's eyes until Phoebe calls for him and he has to go back upstairs. Kat wears the sweater home and Daisy asks about it. 

Kat starts to get a bit more bold around Tim; I guess since he gave her his sweater, she knows that he likes her. When he comes home one evening, she's out on the front porch looking through the telescope while Phoebe is upstairs, sleeping. He asks her if she wants any soda or juice (hehe, something you would so offer a child or a teen), and she replies that she'll have wine. Girl, stop pretending like you're older than 21. She will also call in to the pizza place, claiming she has to "baby-sit", but of course she's just spending time with Tim.

Kat asks Jojo to baby-sit for Phoebe so she and Tim can have a romantic pizza dinner date in the attic of the house he's refurnishing. Kind of ironic that she's the baby-sitter, but the dad is taking the baby-sitter on a date, so the baby-sitter needs to find a replacement baby-sitter! They end up kissing, and I'm assuming they do more than that though we're just shown them making out. Later, they're in the car driving back to Tim's house and they're both just so in love, kissing and holding hands. It's pouring when they get to the house and Kat is huddled close to Tim while he has his arm around her with his coat over both of them and they're both laughing and smiling as they come barreling through the front door. And guess who is there to greet them? It's Nikki, Tim's wife, who has returned from whatever she was doing in England. Ruh-roh! Luckily, Jojo has a cover story ready, asking Kat how her mother is and if she got her medicine. I don't know how much Nikki is buying this story. Kat's mom being sick explains why Kat wasn't baby-sitting Phoebe that night, but why would Tim be with her? Sure, you could say he was trying to be supportive and there for her and Jojo even explains it away that he was just being nice because what if her mother had died? But then why would they both be laughing and smiling when they enter the house? I think Nikki knows there's nothing wrong with Kat's mother! She has to know something is up. They never really say, but I think she has a hunch. Kat is shell-shocked as Jojo drives her home, but what did she expect? Did she really think this thirty-year-old married man with a daughter was going to leave his wife for a seventeen-year-old? Honestly, this guy should be in jail; he's pretty despicable. Kat is still in shock the next day at work because she takes an uncooked pizza to a table instead of grabbing the cooked one. Tim does try to make things "right" by stopping at the Mystic Pizza with Phoebe in tow telling her that Phoebe wanted to say good-bye to her. He offers her a check to help her with Yale, but it does seem more like he's paying her off. After he leaves, Kat rips up the check much to Jojo's dismay, but Daisy approves of her sister's action, saying that Kat will find another way to pay for Yale. 

Not to spoil anything, but Kat is the only one of the three girls who doesn't have a happy ending with her love interest. You don't think Daisy or Jojo will get happy endings either, but their guys come around in the end, or in Jojo's case, she comes around to her guy.

The opening of the movie begins with Jojo about to be married to her boyfriend, Bill (Vincent D'Onofrio) in a church ceremony. She looks like she's about to be sick and before they can get to their vows, she faints. We don't see any of the aftermath; the next scene shows Jojo is at work at the Mystic Pizza telling her co-workers that she basically got cold feet and couldn't go through with it. She tells them, "I saw myself ten years from now, fat and ugly and all these kids swarming around me and I was picking fish scales out of Bill's boots." (Bill is a fisherman). She mentions that her dad is angry that she didn't get married since he paid $5,000 for the wedding. (Is it me or does that seem like a bargain? Of course, maybe in 1988 that was extreme and it's not like these girls come from families with a lot of money). 

Jojo tells them Bill still isn't talking to her which makes me wonder how many days has it been since the wedding that never took place? Of course, just as soon as she says that, here comes Bill walking into the restaurant! This is the kind of thing that only ever happens in movies! She takes him outside where she apologizes to him and he still wants to get married, but she is hesitant about it. We kind of have a gender role reversal where the guy is the one who wants to get married while the woman doesn't want to commit to her partner, but instead just wants to use him for sex. I'm not sure where Bill lives, but he must have roommates or something because Jojo still lives with her parents and they're (well mostly she is) always trying to find places for them to have sex, including the bathroom at the Mystic Pizza....eww. She also tries to get him to use her sister's apartment when it's revealed that she and her husband will be out of town for three days. He's not interested, though. 

One night, they're going at it on the floor of her living room, but when Bill looks up he sees a bust of a creepy and disapproving Jesus staring right back at him. He tells Jojo he can't continue and she suggests they go to her room and tells him it will be okay because her parents are asleep. He declines, telling her he has to leave. She's still trying to make him stay. He tells her that he loves her and wants them to make a commitment, but she seems more interested in having sex with him. He wants them to get married and she tells him if she hears that word one more time, she's going to scream. Of course "married" is the next word to come out of his mouth and true to her word, she lets out a scream, waking both her parents who come down to find their daughter with her boyfriend who has his pants around his ankles. Jojo's father starts to attack Bill who manages to pull up his pants and run out the door. This scene is played for laughs, even Jojo is laughing about it the next day when she's recounting the story to her friends, but it felt more awkward than anything else. 

Oh, I want to point out something I noticed when they were in her living room that I see in movies and TV shows, but never in real life: the couch has a plastic cover over it. I have never understood the plastic cover over the couch. I guess it's supposed to keep the couch from getting dirty/dusty, but it just looks so tacky! And are you supposed to keep the cover on all the time or take it off when you sit on the couch? But then, if you're sitting on the couch (probably with some sort of snack or drink if you're watching TV), then it's bound to get crumbs on it, so I would assume you just leave the ugly plastic cover on it all the time, right? I'm so confused. I've just never understood it. Like I said, I've never seen this in real life, so is this a movie/TV show thing? I just don't understand why you would buy a couch/chair, then make it super ugly by covering it with plastic. Plus, it can't be comfortable to sit on it! Luckily, this seems like a trend that has seemed to die out! 

Like I mentioned before, Bill is a fisherman and he has a boat he named after Jojo, which she finds very romantic. However, the day after their little tryst at her house, he has covered the word "Jojo" with a sign that says "nympho" and she doesn't find that funny at all. He will later apologize about the sign. They will break up because they're not on the same page about marriage, but in the end, they are not only back together, but it is revealed that they have just gotten married after Jojo tells him that nothing has changed except for her name and the last scene of the movie is the wedding reception held at the Mystic Pizza. (Seems like kind of a small place to hold a wedding reception, but whatever). Jojo makes a joke to her two friends how her mother-in-law asked her when she (Bill's mother) is going to have grandkids and how she (Jojo) has been only married for two hours. Um, Jojo, I'm pretty sure your mother-in-law knows you guys have been doing it for awhile, so it's not out of the realm for you to be pregnant! 

Then we have Daisy and it is easy to see why Julia Roberts became such a big star. This was her first big movie, then she did Steel Magnolias the year after that, then Pretty Women the year after that, then she won her Oscar ten years after that, and the rest, as they say, is history. I can see why she was cast in Pretty Woman because she is very, very pretty. In fact, she pretty much tells her sister that she (Kat) has the brains and she (Daisy) at least has her looks, which her mother will sink her ship by telling her that she won't always look that way.

When Daisy, Kat, and Jojo go to a bar with Bill and a couple of his friends one night, Daisy catches the eye of a young, rich guy who is on a double date with one of his friends. He goes over to a guy shooting darts and makes a bet with him that if he gets three bullseyes in a row, he gets $50, plus he will take a shot between each throw as the guy has instructed. He manages to get the first two in the center and by this time a crowd has gathered around him, including Daisy. As he's taking his shot of tequila before his final throw, he locks eyes with Daisy and then he biffs the last throw. So she literally catches his eye. I guess he was so distracted by her that he missed the last one. 

We will later find out his name is Charlie. His date, Lorna, is dressed as a flight attendant; there's no better way to explain it. His friend's date is dressed like she's from the 1800s: she's wearing a white blouse, a cable knit sweater vest, and a long skirt. Very odd choice of wardrobe for going to the bar. But maybe they wanted to put these girls in frumpy clothes to make Daisy stand out even more, but I don't think you have to do that. Charlie wants to play pool, but Lorna isn't interested, so he asks Daisy if she'll play with him (and his friend and his date). The girlfriend of Charlie's friend takes her turn and misses and her boyfriend tells her, "That's why we play boy-girl. To even things out." Oh my God, what a douche. STFU, dude. But Daisy shows everyone up by being ridiculously good at pool. While all this is going on she's giving sultry looks to Charlie and there's a sexy song with lots of saxophone in it and the lyrics go something like, "It's getting hot in here; I know you feel it and I feel it too." They're laying it on pretty, pretty thick there. [/Larry David voice). 

After the game is finished, Lorna, who is clearly threatened by Daisy, wants to leave and Charlie obliges. I'm still not sure if Lorna was his girlfriend or just a girl he was on a date with. Either way, he's kind of a tool for doing that to her. We'll never see her again after this, anyway. 

We will later find out that Charlie found out where Daisy lives as she comes home one day to find him sitting in the living room with her mother. I'm super confused how he found her. All we know is that Charlie tells her, "You are a very difficult woman to find." I'll say! They didn't even have social media back then and he didn't know her name or address. They never tell us how he found her; I guess it will always remain a mystery. If some guy I just met the other day found where I lived and was sitting in my living room with my mom when I came home, I would be mortified! I assume Charlie told Daisy's mother he was taking her out for dinner because she tells Daisy she didn't know she was going out for dinner.

They go out and Daisy is wearing a new dress we saw her modeling for Kat in an earlier scene. It's a short black strapless dress with a big white bow on the bust. It seems a little cold for this dress considering it's nearing autumn in New England. She tells Kat she plans to return it after she's worn it and she's modeling it on the stairs when her mom is in the kitchen and could come through the door anytime and see her daughter wearing the $160 dress. I guess it's not that cold since she's wearing that dress and they're riding in Charlie's red Porsche convertible. The car ends up getting a flat tire and they have to flag someone down. It doesn't work when he does it, so Daisy tries to be all sexy in her short dress and high heels, but that still doesn't stop traffic. So finally when Charlie drops his pants in front of a car with a bunch of young women, they stop for them. Charming. 

I guess their new friends dropped them off at the restaurant where they have dinner, but I'm not sure how they returned home! During dinner, Charlie tells Daisy he's not at Yale or Harvard or whatever Ivy League school he attends because he "needed a vacation from law school." A few days later, after they've slept together in his parents' bedroom of their summer home, Charlie reveals to Daisy that he actually got kicked out of school because he cheated on his final because he was flunking the course. Daisy tells him he shouldn't have lied. She's glad he told her and tells him, "Don't do it again." This dumbbutt has the gall to ask her if she means cheat or lie. Um, what do you think? I think the two go hand-in-hand. Of course, she replies, "Neither." 

After the episode where Jojo sees the "Nympho" sign on Bill's boat, we see the three girls outside the parking lot of a bar where Bill's truck is parked and Jojo finds a spare key he keeps under his vehicle and they steal his car and drive to the country club while singing "Respect" on full blast. It really makes no sense why they'd want to go to the country club where they sneak around the back and sit on a golf cart and watch the people dancing and eating and mingling through the windows. Not until Daisy and Jojo start dancing the jitterbug on the lawn and Kat is looking through the windows and sees Charlie with a beautiful young blonde woman (who I thought was Lorna at first because they looked very similar) and a few scenes earlier Daisy had told the other girls that Charlie had told her was going to Greenwich to visit his 90-year-old grandmother. Hmmmm......

Kat is trying to get them to leave before Daisy sees him, but of course she spots him. They return to Bill's truck and Daisy starts screaming so loudly that I'm surprised nobody heard her and they didn't send security out! She's literally screaming at the top of her lungs, "I'm gonna kill him! I'm so stupid!" She notices his convertible and asks for the keys. At first I thought she was going to key his car. Then, when she gets into the truck, I thought she was going to ram into his car. But she pulls the truck right in front of the convertible and ends up dumping two huge barrels full of gallons of fish into his car. These things are huge and full of fish and water; there's no way she would have been able to topple them over by herself. Nuh-uh. Not buying it. Charlie and the blonde girl are coming out at this moment and he sees what's just happened to his car. Man, this guy cannot get a break with his car. First, the flat tire and now this. Daisy screams at him that he's supposed to be at his grandmother's and we get a simple explanation that his grandma has a migraine and that he called to tell her, but she was out. (See, this wouldn't have happened if texting existed!) He also introduces the girl he's with as his sister. I thought he was lying and we were going to later find out that the girl isn't his sister, but she is. Despite having two huge barrels of fish and water just dumped into his car, he doesn't seem to be at all mad and gives her a hug after she tells him she messed up and that she's sorry. I guess he is rich so he can just buy another car. I do have to wonder how someone who wasn't so financially well-off would take it? I feel like in most instances the person whose car was ruined would never want anything to do with the person who ruined their car ever again. 

When Kat decides to call in to her job at the pizza parlor because she'd rather hang out with Tim, Daisy is super pissed because she was supposed to meet Charlie's parents that night and now she has to stay and cover Kat's shift. I'm with Daisy on this one. There is nothing more infuriating when you think you're going to be done with your shift by a certain time, but then you have to stay because one of your coworkers decided they don't want to come in and call in. Daisy tries to call Kat (to yell at her, presumably), but the phone is off the hook because Tim and Kat are sitting on the couch talking and eating popcorn and they're not paying any attention to Phoebe who is playing on the floor with her stuffed animals and one of them is "talking" on the phone. We see Charlie stop by the Mystic Pizza (hmm, is the Mystic Pizza close to the Mystic River?) and she apologizes and is worried that his mom is going to think she blew her off. Can't Charlie just tell his parents what happened? I would think his parents would understand if she had to stay and work. 

Daisy does eventually have dinner with Charlie and his family and she gets to meet his parents, his aunt and uncle, his sister (again), and his little brother, Steamer (terrible name!), who is played by a 17-year-old Matt Damon in his first movie. They're having lobster and it is amusing because just before this scene Daisy was looking in her own fridge where there are so many lobsters that her mother had caught and she complains that lobster is the only thing they have to eat. Daisy is dressed up in an off-the-shoulder black dress and these huge sparkly earrings. The family has a Portuguese maid named Theresa who knows Daisy (of course they know each other even though we've never met Theresa until now) and she asks Daisy if she's still working at the pizza place. This prompts Charlie's dad to tell her that Charlie never told them she was in "the pizza business". Soon Charlie and his dad start arguing about him not finishing school and as this is going on, Theresa is scooping sour cream onto the plates of the diners to go with their baked potatoes. This is the weirdest thing; rich people in movies are so weird. I'm sure these people are perfectly capable of scooping their own sour cream onto their plates. But they only have her doing that because she accidentally drops a dallop of sour cream onto the arm of Charlie's uncle. His wife mentions how "These Portuguese girls are hard to train. I had one that barely spoke...." she trails off either because she knows she's being horribly racist or she knows Daisy is Portuguese and better shut up. Charlie and his dad continue to fight until his dad tells him, "That's enough" and Charlie says, "I guess that means dinner is over" and as he says this, he gets up and pulls the tablecloth from under the table and all the dishes crash into each other. A furious Daisy gets up and leaves with Charlie following her outside and she accuses him of using her to get to his dad and that his dad didn't cheat him out of law school; he did that on his own. Before asking for a ride home from Theresa, she tells him, "You're not even good enough for me." 

Daisy will get a happy ending when she and Charlie reconcile. During the reception for Jojo and Bill's wedding, he comes to apologize and tells her she was right about what she said about him and his father. 

So while all the storylines with the girls and their love interests are going on, of course, since this film IS called Mystic Pizza, we do get scenes of them working there and wondering what the secret ingredient their boss and the owner, Leona (Conchata Ferrell) puts in the pizza that makes it taste so good. She promises to tell the girls what it is when she retires, but for now, it's going to remain a secret. She claims that her grandfather taught her father how to make the pizza and her father taught her. I'm guessing it's some sort of Portuguese spice. 

Because it's nearing autumn, business isn't doing so well at the Mystic Pizza and it is mentioned they seem to only get really good business during the summer months with all the tourists. The girls think they should ask Hector Pleshette, a stuffy local food critic who calls himself the Fireside Gourmet to come and critique their restaurant, but Leona is against that idea. However, he does show up, seemingly randomly one day (the day after Kat has slept with Tim only to find out his wife has come home that very night) and orders the Mystic Pizza. I guess when you order "the Mystic Pizza" you get pretty much whatever because there are three pizzas all with different toppings and Leona tells Kat to "take her pick" when Pleshette orders "the Mystic Pizza." You'd think people would be more specific when they order their pizzas. If Kat had asked him what toppings he wanted and he told her to surprise him, then that would make more sense. Also, do they not allow people to buy pizza by the slice at this place? Every time they take pizza to a table, it's a whole pie. They give Pleshette one as well even though he only eats a couple bites of one slice! The initial meeting of the Fireside Gourmet doesn't go well because there's a glass of water with dentures in it. This was established at the beginning of the movie when we learn that Mr. Lopes, a regular customer, left his dentures in a glass of water again. Unfortunately, Mr. Lopes had just been at the Mystic Pizza right before Mr. Pleshette and he (the Fireside Gourmet) has a glass of water with dentures in it and asks Kat to bring him a fresh glass of water. Now I'm not sure if Mr. Lopes had been sitting at that table before the food critic arrived and they just forgot to clear the glass or if Kat had accidentally brought him that glass of water in her daze (this was also the same day she brought the uncooked pizza to that one table). Either way, not a great start! Kat, Daisy, Jojo, and Leona are all watching him eat the couple bites of pizza from the front counter as he writes something in his notebook. When he looks back and notices them all watching him, they all look away, only to return to their obvious staring. After eating a few bites, he beckons Kat over and asks for the check after she asks him if he would like anything else. She tells him she'll get him a box so he can take the rest of the pizza home, but he tells her no. This is why I'm certain this place doesn't let you order by the slice. Surely this guy knew he only needed a couple of bites before he knew what his review of the pizza would be; otherwise why order a whole pizza? It also explains why their sales haven't been up. Of course people are going to be more hesitant to come if they can't order pizza by the slice; who wants to waste all that money on a whole pizza if you're not even going to eat it all? I will say; that pizza does look mighty tasty. 

A few days later, the girls and Lorena (and all the customers in there at the time) are watching their restaurant being critiqued on the small TV that hangs above the front counter. Pleshette begins his review by saying, "The atmosphere was rustic, the service was oversolicitous to say the least." Jojo interrupts to ask, "Is that good?", but is quickly shushed by the others. Pleshette goes on to say, "I am not a pizza person. I am not particularly fond of cheesy cuisine." The Mystic Pizza staff is pretty much resigned to think he's going to give them a terrible review, but he goes on to say that, the pizza, "in a word, is superb" and that it "has a blend of spices I can't quite identify." We get a funny line from Lorena where she says, "You bet your ass you can't!" He gives them four stars, his highest rating. This did not surprise me at all; I knew he was going to love the pizza despite the signs of him not being all that interested in it. As soon as the show is over, they immediately get a phone call from someone asking if they need reservations and it's clear that they will be getting a lot more customers. Hopefully they now decide to sell pizza by the slice. 

Business is booming and so great, in fact, that Lorena gives money to Kat to pay for Yale and tells her she can pay her back later. She also tells her that since she and her husband could never have children, the three of them are like her own daughters and wants to help her. 

So Jojo and Daisy get their guys, Kat gets the money to attend Yale, and Leona gets good publicity The movie ends with the girls laughing and wondering what Leona puts in her pizza as the secret ingredient.

Social Anxieties

Eighth Grade

Director: Bo Burnham
Cast: Elsie Fisher, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson
Released: July 13, 2018

Every day I wake up, I thank God there was no social media when I was in middle/high school. I am so, so, SO thankful I didn't have to deal with all of that during my most awkward years of my life. Even though I didn't have to deal with that, I can relate with Kayla (Elsie Fisher), the protagonist, who, as you may have guessed from the film's title, is an 8th grader. It takes place during her last week in middle school. 

I think we can all agree that middle school is the worst time in one's life. It's that age when everything is so awkward and you're going through those gross and weird changes in your body. I mean, I didn't have a terrible experience in middle school, but it isn't one I would want to revisit.

I could totally relate to Kayla because she is super quiet and keeps to herself and I am like that too, especially when I was her age. I felt so bad for her during an early scene when the principal is giving out the superlatives (my middle school never did this, thank God!) and after they announce the winners for "Most Athletic" and "Best Eyes",  they announce "Most Talkative" and I'm thinking, Uh-oh. Are they really going to go there? And they do. They announce the "winners" (there's one for a boy and a girl) for "Most Quiet" and of course Kayla gets it. Oh my God, this was hard to watch. My heart went out to her and I wanted to yell at the school faculty. Who in their right mind would think a thirteen-year-old kid would want to win an award for "Most Quiet?" When you're that age being quiet  equals not being cool or not having any friends, so why would they think they would want that to be announced to the entire school? Plus, most quiet kids don't want to be singled out, especially at a school assembly. Really terrible on the faculty's part. 

While Kayla is quiet at school, she has a channel on YouTube called Kayla's Corner (or was it Korner?) where she makes videos about being an adolescent, like what it means to be yourself and putting yourself out there. I was thinking she had a huge following and how ironic it would be that this shy girl at school is a huge YouTube sensation that nobody at her school knows about, but no, we see that her videos only have a couple of views. To be fair, her videos are pretty terrible She says "um" and "like" every other word. I wouldn't want to watch that! 

Her mom is out of the picture and you can tell her dad (Josh Hamilton) is doing his best to raise her, but he just doesn't know how to get through to her. There were times when I was on his side, but there were also times I thought he overstepped and I was on Kayla'a side. During the first scene we meet him, we first see a close up of Kayla scrolling through her phone with earbuds in her ears listening to loud pop music. We hear a muffled noise and the camera pans back to show that she's sitting at the table with her dad eating dinner! (Well, she's not eating since she's too busy looking at her phone!) Her dad is trying to have a conversation with her and I'm shocked he's not yelling at her to get off her f**king phone while they'er at the f**king dinner table. We will find out shortly that he lets her do whatever she wants on Fridays, hence the reason he's not throwing her phone across the room.

Kayla's dad knows she's struggling at school with fitting in and gives her the parent pep talk. He tells her that he think she's really cool and has lots of cool interests and that she should put herself out there because if people knew about her and her interests, she would have friends. This also happens in the scene between Molly Ringwald and her dad in Sixteen Candles when she's telling her dad about the boy she likes and he tells her that if he can't see how beautiful and smart she is, then he's an idiot. As someone who's gotten the parent pep talk many times in my youth, I'm sure this fell on deaf ears for Kayla as it did for me. I mean, your parents are supposed to build you up and give you self confidence. No parent is ever going to tell their child, "You suck" or "You don't deserve friends". But it really doesn't mean anything when they're trying to tell their kid how awesome they are because, let's face it, parents are biased when it comes to their own kids.

Kayla has been invited to a birthday/pool party of one of the popular girls at her school. I don't remember her name, so we'll call her L'il Regina George. Actually, it was the mother who invited her and Kayla receives a bitchy Instragram message from L'il Regina George that says something like, "My mom told me to invite you to my party so this is me doing that." Yeah, this girl sucks. I would have been like, "F**k you, I'm not going to your party." But Kayla does go (probably because her dad knows abut it) and I felt super anxious for her when she's wearing her swimsuit and going down the steps toward the pool. I was listening to a review of this movie on a podcast and one of the hosts said he felt more anxious for this young girl in this movie than any character in any horror movie he's seen and I have to agree. Granted, I haven't seen many horror movies, but this one I could totally relate to Kayla and I could sense her dread. Let me tell you something: I absolutely hate parties/large social gatherings (with maybe a FEW exceptions). There is nothing worse going to a large gathering where you don't know anybody and you're shy or socially awkward. I would have gone into that bathroom and just cried which may or may not have happened once or twice in my life. At least it's a pool party so even though it may be awkward wearing a bathing suit in front of everyone, she can sort of preoccupy herself in the pool and doesn't have to just sit/stand there looking awkward if there was no activity involved. (This is why I avoid parties in the rare chance I'm invited to any!) She's by herself for a few minutes until a nerdy-looking kid swims up to her and starts talking to her and introduces himself as L'il Regina George's cousin. Even though Kayla is paying more attention to her crush, I know they're going to be friends by the end of the movie. (And I'm right).

After everyone is swimming and back in the house, Kayla does exchange some brief words with her crush, Aiden. I guess this gives her the confidence to take a turn at karaoke when that's the next activity at the party. While this is going on, we see another one of her YouTube videos where she's talking about confidence and how to obtain it. Maybe I'm just really stupid, but I had no idea if she had made this video BEFORE she went to the party, like she was hyping herself up to have the confidence to do something she wouldn't normally do or if she made it AFTER the party when she was on the high of being involved in something and probably thinking that she mattered. I'm going to guess she made it after the party just because she probably had more time. You know, you gotta record the video (and it might take more than one take), then you gotta edit it, then you gotta upload it.

A switch has gone off inside her and Kayla decides she wants to change certain aspects of her life. She wants more friends, she wants a best friend, and she wants a boyfriend. She makes a list of how to achieve these goals (using a notebook as in a literal spiral notebook with paper you tear out, wouldn't most kids today use a laptop?) This is where Kayla and I vastly differ. I never cared about having friends in middle school. I may have had a couple people I called friends during this time, but I mostly had acquaintances and I certainly never had a best friend. And I never even considered having a boyfriend, at this, the most extremely awkward stage in my life where I had glasses, braces, frizzy hair, and god knows what else that came with being a gross 13/14 year old. Yes, this is the time when every girls feels glamorous. Eww, who wants that? Even if I did want a boyfriend, I was aware enough to know I couldn't get one; as you can read from the description of myself, I was not cute! I never suffered from what the kids today call "FOMO" (fear of missing out). I could not care less if I wasn't invited to a party (because 1, I wouldn't have gone anyway and b), I did not care about making friends). I was never even aware of any social gatherings among my peers unless it was a school dance. Hence another reason I'm so happy social media didn't exist when I was an adolescent: I could remain blissfully unaware. But Kayla seems to crave being popular and I will give her props, that she does go for it. She does have the balls to talk to her crush. She just doesn't have a mundane conversation with him (well, she does at first), but after learning he's a total perv (to be fair, he is an eighth grade boy), she tells him she has naked photos of herself on her phone to show her boyfriend when she gets one and she's good at fellatio. I did laugh how during the boring part of their conversation, he's just mumbling "uh huh" to her and is focused on his phone but once she brings up the naked photos, she has his full attention. Someday she's going to look back at this and realize what a creep her middle school crush was. I thought we were going to get an extremely awkward/uncomfortable moment where they do go out and he forces her to do something she doesn't want to do, but the movie will take a different turn and she doesn't seem to pursue Aiden anymore. I'm guessing she realized that he was only interested in her for one thing and by the end of the movie she recognizes she has more worth than that.

I admire her ambition for wanting to have more friends, but why does she pursue L'il Regina George and her posse of mean girls? Why not make friends with people who are more relatable to her and will truly be good friends? When she goes up to LRG and her friend to thank her for inviting her to her party, the two popular girls are just not having it and are concentrated on their phones. Well, now Kayla knows how her dad feels when he's trying to talk to her when she's on her phone! There is a great scene at the end where Kayla tells off LRG, so good for her. But, really, she should have never tried to be friends with her in the first place.

Because it's the last week of eighth grade, the fact that Kayla will be in high school next year has been a running theme throughout the film. On one of their last days, the eighth graders go to the high school where they will each be paired up with a senior who will take them around and show them a day in the life of a high schooler. I don't know if many middle schools do this, but mine never did. There is this weird moment when all the eighth graders are walking down the high school hall in a single line with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them. It's very odd; why are they making these 8th graders walk like they're in pre-school? The high school kids are laughing and taking photos and I can't say I blame them.

Kayla is paired with a girl named Olivia and she's very sweet and nice to Kayla and comes off as being a supportive older sister and it's clear that she is popular and has lots of friends and right away you can tell that she is the kind of person Kayla strives to be in high school. Olivia even gives her number to Kayla telling her to call her if she ever wants to talk about anything and Kayla does. (Even if I had a good rapport with someone and they told me to call them if I ever needed anything, I would have thrown that number away. I hate calling people because I always feel like I'm bugging them. Now if texting were around when I was in middle school, I wouldn't have a problem with that.) The girls chat about how much middle school sucks and Olivia asks Kayla if she wants to hang out with her and her friends at the food court at the mall. Of course Kayla wants to (hey, if she can't be friends with the popular girls her own age, she can be friends with seniors in high school! That will show L'il Regina George!) and she starts freaking out and drops her phone like a dork.

At the mall (which her dad drops her off at...is there anything worse than having to have your parent drop you off/pick you up anytime you want to do something? I remember a couple moments like these where my mom would drop off a friend and me at a movie theater, but luckily, since I didn't have many friends, I didn't have to worry about this too much), Kayla meets up with Olivia and her three friends which include another girl and two boys. (Haha, can you imagine if they were on a double date and Kayla was the fifth wheel? Awkward! But that isn't the case).

They get into a conversation about social media which made me feel super f**king old, but it was interesting. One of the seniors asks Kayla what grade she was in when Snapchat came out and when she tells them fifth grade, they're all aghast and shocked because they didn't have Snapchat until they were in eighth grade. I guess Elsie Fisher told Bo Burnham that nobody in middle school uses Facebook, so that is a line thrown in the movie. Who knew?  I guess they all use Instagram and Snapchat. Maybe because I'm so far removed from my middle school years, I do not understand the appeal of Snapchat. Even if I was in middle school, I still feel like I would think it's really stupid. If I were to rank all the social media platforms, that one would be at the bottom, maybe just above MySpace. Oh my God, who remembers MySpace? Terrible, just terrible. Remember how you could "decorate" it any way you wanted and have music cues so you could come across someone's visually blinding MySpace page that was purple and orange and some terrible early '00s song (like "Milkshake") playing. AURGH. MySpace was the f**king worst. I only had one (probably the most boring MySpace page in the history of the world) because my cousin suggest I get it. I barely had enough friends to make a "Top Ten" friend list. But enough about that. I'm here to tell you how much I think Snapchat is stupid. A friend suggested I get it, and I did try to download it but once I realized it would take up too much space on my phone and I was too lazy to sign up for something I knew I would never use, I abandoned that idea. I don't understand why you would want to send/receive something that will be erased thirty seconds (or however long it is) after you view it. What is the point of that? (Unless you're sending dirty pics, I guess!) The reason I like Instagram is that I can go back and view photos I took a couple years ago and I like having a little photo album. Maybe I'm just not cool/hip enough to get the appeal of SnapChat, but I think it is really baffling. And honestly, everything I've heard about SnapChat sounds super shady or gross, so I'm not upset about not being part of that culture.

The remainder of my review may contain slight spoilers.

One of the guys mention that some guy has been looking at them for a while now and when Kayla turns around, she sees her dad on the level above them. Apparently he never went home and just stayed at the mall to check up on her. Not cool. Don't spy on your kids. (Or at least be a bit more sneaky about it!) Needless to say, she is furious when she excuses herself to talk to him in private. He tells her he will leave (after bribing her with some spending money) and pick her up later, but she tells him she will get her own ride.

Remember when I said I thought there was going to be an extremely awkward/uncomfortable moment with Kayla and her crush? We do get a moment like this, but you can also add "terrifying" among the adjectives and it's with one of the guys who's a friend of Olivia's. I don't know how close of friends they are, but apparently Olivia isn't aware of just how much of a creep this guy is, otherwise I doubt she would not let CreepBoy be alone with Kayla in the car! Basically, she's in the backseat and he makes a comment about how it's hard to talk to her when she's in the backseat and she asks if she should climb up to the front, but no, he tells her he'll get in the back with her and he stops the car to do that. Already you can tell she's extremely uncomfortable. He makes small chat with her, and she's being polite, then he suggests they play Truth or Dare. Ugh. First of all, whoever invented that game needs to be shot...twice. This is the worst game ever. It's designed to make people answer super uncomfortable questions or do really stupid things. Also, seriously, who plays that game after sixth grade? NOBODY, that's who. Because by that time, you realize just how much of a stupid "game" it is. Anyway, as you can imagine, Kayla is not interested in playing the stupid game, but the poor girl doesn't want to do anything to anger him, so she just sort of plays along until he "dares" her to take off her shirt. She firmly tells him "No" and that she wants to go home. This was a really scary scene because you had no idea what was going to happen to her. Luckily it doesn't go any further than that, and he does take her home, but he's telling her how he wanted to "help" her so she's not "inexperienced" when she starts high school. Ugh, what a tool. Kayla is upset and begs him not to tell Olivia, which I thought was odd. He should be begging her not to tell Olivia! We never do see what the aftermath was; like did she tell Olivia?

The movie ends with Kayla having a heart to heart with her dad (which made me cry, I admit) and her making friends with the kid she met at the pool party, as I predicted. You can tell she's going to be okay in high school because she doesn't need to be the most popular kid and she realizes she's just fine the way she is.

Yes, middle school is the worst and social media is the worst (especially when you're an unpopular teenager!) and again, thank God I didn't have to deal with it when I was in middle school and thank God my middle school days are long over! By the way, I would never see this movie with my parents if I were in 8th grade because there are some extremely awkward moments! 

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!