![]() ![]() Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano, and Anne Ramsey provide antagonists so good that they utterly hose the rule about not working with animals or children. They say you cannot have a good protagonist without a good antagonist to bounce off. ![]() But then, in 1985, scaring the intended audience a little was considered a healthy part of making a film for those in the age ranges depicted here. And while I am on that subject, who could forget the immortal scene early on in the film where Mouth deliberately loses something in the translation when Rosalita is shown around? But the prize for scene-stealing goes to John Matuszak, who plays the unofficial eighth Goonie, Sloth, with a weird aplomb that may well scare the willies out of parts of the intended audience. It also gives Corey Feldman a good chance to act out a character who speaks very fluent Spanish. The bone piano shown in one such sequence, for example, would appear in the nightmares of children learning a regular piano for years after the film's theatrical release. ![]() It works because unlike similar adventure films where the director expects us to be impressed by a fiendish-sounding name, the specific places that are visited by the Goonies have function. Speaking of fiendish traps, the adventurers journey from one puzzling location to the next with barely a stop for breath. It is just a pity that Chris Columbus' screenplay did not give them a little more to do, other than defuse one fiendish trap towards the end of the ride. Exactly what they are doing other than giving the character of Brand something similar to himself to bounce his more adult-oriented lines from is anyone's guess, but they do work in their limited capacity. The only weakness in the characterisations is with Martha Plimpton and Kerri Green, who join the adventuring boys a little way into the film. You will not see the teenaged Brand responding to the same situation in the same manner as the ten year old Mikey, and that is where a major part of the film's strength is derived. Unlike an episode of Barney, every member of this principal group is given a background and a string of differences from their castmates. The film revolves around a group of children and adolescents who live in the poorer, less trendy part of a beachfront town. Seeing him in the video-enhanced commentary of the DVD nearly two decades later was a surprise and a half. Indeed, this was probably the first film that introduced me to the reality that the same actor will often play ten different parts in ten different films when I realised that Jonathan Ke Quan was the same brat that made parts of Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom so amusing. It is not a coincidence that many of its cast and crew have repeatedly appeared in all sorts of productions before and since. Despite what the IMDb's ratings would have you believe, it is an immortal classic that warrants repeated and frequent viewings. But this is just one of The Goonies' selling points. Nostalgia is a wonderful thing, and seeing how the principal cast had aged (or hardly aged in Josh Brolin's case) was worth the price of admission on its own. It was in 2001 or thereabouts that I watched and listened to the audio commentary track that is on the DVD version of The Goonies. ![]()
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