The Goonies are a gang of kids that live in the "Goondocks," a neighborhood in Astoria, Oregon, consisting of Mikey Walsh (Sean Astin), his older brother Brand (Josh Brolin), "Mouth" (Corey Feldman), "Data" (Ke Huy Quan), and "Chunk" (Jeff Cohen), who are preparing for relocation as the neighborhood is scheduled to be demolished and replaced with a golf course. While digging through Mikey's attic, they discover a treasure map and doubloon that point to the long lost treasure of "One Eyed Willie" a pirate from the 17th century. The boys incapacitate Brand and head out, only to find the path to treasure is blocked by booby traps, and obstacles natural and man made. Brand catches up to the boys with Andy Carmichael (Keri Green) and Stef Steinbrenner (Martha Plimpton) in tow, but they aren't the only ones searching for "One Eyed Willie"'s treasure - the Fratelli family (Ann Ramsey, Joe Pantoliano, and Robert Davi) are in hot pursuit, having captured "Chunk" and locking him in with the Fratelli's youngest, the monster "Sloth" (John Matsuzak).I've always been willing to overlook The Goonies many logic lapses (and there are plenty if you try to follow the story carefully) and simply enjoy Richard Donner, Chris Columbus, and Steven Spielberg's treasure hunt for its whirlwind pacing and ability to install a sense of awe in what could be just another "kids' movie." Donner, who had previously directed The Omen and Superman and would later make The Lethal Weapon series, is an underrated visual storyteller able to make otherwise inauspicious films imminently watchable.
I'm not sure quite how to dole out the credit between Columbus (who wrote the film and would go on to direct) and Spielberg (who came up with the story and was executive producer, part of the 1985 productions that included Back to the Future, Gremlins, and Young Sherlock Holmes) but I tend to defer to Donner for recurring jokes (like the inability of any of the characters to pronounce words, responding to corrections with "that's what I said!") and a moment that can either be read as intertextual or self-reflexive (when Sloth tears his shirt open, revealing the Superman logo, as John Williams cues the theme from Donner's film).
The VHS experience changes watching The Goonies considerably: Donner shot the film in "scope" (2.35:1), and the cropping is severe. It's one thing to describe the image shift, but here's an extra from the Die Hard DVD that will show you exactly what happens, and then I'll join you on the other side to apply this to the Goonies experience.
On a well worn VHS like the copy of The Goonies I watched, the frame is not only tighter on actors, and group scenes cropped in strange ways, but the tape had a slight fading of the image towards the middle, mixed with some distortion as the magnetic tape had degraded over time. The effect can be jarring in the era of widescreen TVs and anamorphic DVDs, but there's also a sense of nostalgia that accompanies watching a tape like this, one that won't exist for much longer.
Videocassettes were the only way to watch films when I was growing up (people born five years earlier didn't even have that); laserdiscs were too expensive and DVD didn't exist until I was in high school, so if you wanted to see a movie after it left theatres, you rented it at the local video store. Sometimes they sold used tapes, sometimes a friend might be able to make an "extra" copy if you were really lucky, but for the first ten years or so of VHS, the concept of "widescreen" didn't really exist. For people who didn't live on the west coast and have Z Channel, then movies were cropped to a 4X3 format, in order to fill up the screen of standard "square" TVs. It made sense, but it did for a very long time skew the perspective of a generation raised on VHS: every film, classic or new, fit inside the square box. Cognitively, many of us never made the connection that movie screens weren't the same size and something might be missing.
I was six when The Goonies opened, and I remember seeing the film and enjoying the kid friendly narrative with a decidedly un-kid friendly execution (Donner and Columbus display a barely hidden mean streak throughout the film, with a number of moments - like the blender and Chunk's hand or the "Truffle Shuffle" - that would never make a PG film today), and until the film was released on DVD more than fifteen years later, I'd only seen the film in its "pan and scan" iteration. There was a strange familiarity watching The Goonies on videocassette, and while I knew what was missing, the framing was conscientious enough never to disrupt Donner's visual storytelling, as it has on other films I've seen.
In all honesty, as a film geek / purist / whatever, I'm not going to suggest you hunt down a VCR and VHS copy of The Goonies - for one I already know the film is polarizing among people my age, as many people can't overlook the flaws in premise or the film's many "easy out" plot holes. Back to the Future is better constructed, Gremlins balances the light and dark elements with more flair, leaving only Young Sherlock Holmes as a film The Goonies is easily more defensible than. Like Tron, I do feel it holds up better than the "haze of nostalgia" that people assume I view childhood films in, but I freely admit that advocating for The Goonies can be an uphill battle. Watch it for yourself and decide - if you like The Monster Squad, I think it's a safe bet you'll understand why I like The Goonies.
* In the spirit of full disclosure, this is not the worn out copy of The Goonies I grew up with, but a clamshell version circa 2000/01. It still had some wear on it, so that's nice to see it was still being viewed.
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