THE GOONIES: 4K UHD Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1985) Warner Home Video
Richard Donner’s The Goonies (1985) arrived
just in time for a particularly special epoch in my life; that, being the
moment just before puberty – and the good sense God gave a lemon – kicked in.
Thus, the adventure/comedy yarn, dedicated to a troop of prepubescent
misanthropes from the wrong side of the tracks, who discover excitement and riches
on their own terms, was precisely the sort of adolescent daydream to richly
fulfill my own teenage fancy. Not so much in the intervening decades, as the
movie’s shortcomings appear to stand in relief of its virtues. It’s still a
thoroughly fun and invigorating bit of blarney, with a relatively articulate
screenplay by Chris Columbus (from a story by Steven Spielberg), and with a solid cast
of young moppets and goofy-looking teen talent, Josh Brolin, Sean Astin, and Corey
Feldman among them, soon to graduate to bigger and better things. If you saw The
Goonies in your late childhood to early teens, you likely have retained a
soft spot for it in both your heart and head, the Astoria Oregon coastal
setting, with its craggy bluffs, hillside caverns and sunken galleons, lost to
a hidden archaeological past, vaguely reminiscent of Spielberg’s more memorable
(and more maturely situated) first outing with Indiana Jones; 1981’s Raiders
of the Lost Ark. Dumbing down the quest for the kiddie sect does present
its share of challenges as the soft-hewn boy flesh on tap is a bit of a
disconnect with the athletic escapades where more masculine brawn and balls
would have likely triumphed, rather than merely sufficed. Be that as it may, The
Goonies was a big hit for Donner and Spielberg – another feather in each
creator’s cap, and a marketing bonanza for Warner Bros. – the studio
distributing the picture.
Chalking the soundtrack full of mid-80’s pop artists
like Cyndi Lauper, REO Speedwagon and The Bangles was arguably another shrewd
maneuver, guaranteed – if nothing else – to sell a lot of vinyl and tapes. Interesting
to note Lauper’s ‘The Goonies R Good Enough’ was not yet a hit single until
after the movie had wrapped; her brief appearance on the ‘tellie’ performing
the supposed ‘music video’ a post-production consideration that perfectly
dovetailed into the movie’s general release. Also of curiosity; David Grusin’s
orchestral score, borrowing heavily from Max Steiner’s cues for 1948’s The
Adventures of Don Juan, and, to include the memorable ‘Fratelli Chase’
was omitted from the album release, and would remain unheard, apart from the
movie’s integrated soundtrack, for the next 25 years – despite being exploited in
trailers to promote 1987’s Innerspace and 1994’s Guarding Tess.
Shooting The Goonies proved something of a double-edged sword for Donner,
who could certainly appreciate his pint-sized actors for their unbridled energy
and charisma, but frequently found himself doing double duty as both director
and ‘lion tamer’ of this ‘unruly brood.
Donner also shared the production with Spielberg who,
apart from producing the picture, also offered his hand and advice on how to
manage the young stars. Shooting lasted 5 months, with an additional 6-weeks post-dubbing.
In the editing process, several sequences were scrapped, leaving a thinly
veiled reference to an ‘octopus near the end, vaguely mysterious as no octopus
ever appears in the movie. Production took full advantage of the Oregon
locations distinctly to feature several landmarks, including the Clatsop County
Jail, later converted into a museum which currently houses memorabilia from The
Goonies and other movies produced locally. Virtually all of the underground
‘cavern’ sequences were shot on sound stages back at Warner Bros. Burbank studio;
Donner and his production designer, Rube Goldberg, building a full-sized pirate galleon,
half submerged in the indoor tank on Stage 16; one of the largest sound stages
in the world. The set was so enormous, the initial reaction from the cast elicited
cheers of awe. In all, The Goonies is ambitious picture-making of the
Donner/Spielberg caste, imbued with each man’s then prevailing sense of
wonderment for the implausible. Lest we remember, Donner is the fellow who
proved a man could fly in the original Superman (1978), while Spielberg,
again as producer, had managed to tap into his own invulnerable prepubescent terrors
with Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984). So, The Goonies, with its nods
to pirate gold, fortune and glory, and, a hand-crafted mythology a la the Pirates
of the Caribbean ilk, was precisely up Donner and Spielberg’s alley.
If the tale of poor kids, unearthing an old treasure
map to spare their beloved homes from foreclosure and the wrecking ball, fell just
shy of expectations, the blame squarely rested on Donner’s diminutive ‘stars of
tomorrow’, as yet, not fully seasoned to bear up under the weight of Columbus’
uber-witty screenplay, asking more of them than they could ostensibly deliver.
Out of the mouths of babes only works if the babes believe what they are
saying, and, at times, the words emanating from Brolin, Astin and Feldman, read
too much like scripted dialogue for which both the appropriate punctuation and
conviction is lacking. Nevertheless, The Goonies effortlessly massages that
predictable bent of a Spielberg adolescent actioner, with lightly peppered
sexual innuendos of the John Landis/Animal House (1978) vein where tongue-in-cheek
references to male genitalia, looking up girl’s skirts and down their tops
abound. Thus, in hindsight, The Goonies appears to straddle a curious chasm;
not quite the light-hearted and innocent kiddie flick of yore, and yet, not
entirely the forthright ‘adult’ slant for swashbuckling adventure. The kids in
this movie are wiser than their years and the ‘horror’ aspects that
occasionally intrude are of the more urbane flavoring, eschewing the typical ‘in
your face’ scare fest, which has since become not only ‘the norm’ but something
of a ‘standard’ (I use this term loosely, as ‘standard’ implies there
are basic time-honored criteria to be met).
After decades of sanitized and Disney-fied
representations of teenagers and their parents, both behaving as though to have
been perpetually stunted in a Pollyanna-esque time warp, Spielberg and Donner’s
take on children at the cusp of becoming very awkward young adults is, if not
more enlightened, than certainly more on the mark. The kids here incorporate their fractured vulgarities
heard and reinterpreted from their interaction with adults. So ‘shit’
happens – a lot – in The Goonies. Spielberg and Donner are working with
archetypes here: the fat kid, the Asian Brainiac/gadget master, the slightly elder
‘tough’ brother, and a couple of nondescript girls – fit mostly for the rescuing
(from bats, herein) and sucking face with this boy brood. Along the way, they
encounter a motley band of brothers overseen by one greasy and repugnant harridan
(a cross between Shelley Winters’ sneering performance as Ma Goggin in 1977’s Pete’s
Dragon meets the killer brood of backwoods bruisers from TV’s The X-Files
infamous Season 4 episode – ‘Home’). Keeping things lighter,
though still with a sincere air of danger, the boys indulge their curiosity on
a trek beneath their isolated town, deep into the crooks, nooks and crannies of
an ever-evolving labyrinth with set pieces devoted to the booby-trap mélange seen
in both Raiders of the Lost Ark, and its follow-up, Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom (1984). It is too easy to dismiss The Goonies as
Spielberg’s patchwork of leftover oddities culled from other inspired works both
within and without his own canon. And yet, the transparencies are plain and
obvious to anyone with eyes, memory, and, a Blu-ray player.
What remains refreshing about The Goonies is
Donner and Spielberg’s respect for childhood in all its varying and sincerely
flawed forms, and, his frankness in allowing kids to be ‘kids’ - in a sense -
which is to say, far more knowing of the world that surrounds than their adult
counterparts ever give them credit. The other rewarding aspect of the picture
is its roller-coaster ride mentality that, with all the verve of a Robert
Altman for overlapping dialogue, throws so much thrills, chills, chuckles and
SFX at the screen, one is immediately taken on the best ‘dark ride’ voyage
where, even more miraculously, nothing about the journey ever appears
deliberately contrived and/or rushed, or even blown out of proportion. Given
the implausible nature of the story at hand, this is saying a great deal for
Donner and Spielberg’s ability to make meaning from myth and lend credence to chaos.
Even so, The Goonies just feels a
wee bit too clever and/or contrived for its own good – trading on its high
energy, but without the various saccharine-infused respites found in, say, E.T.
- The Extraterrestrial (1982).
Our story begins in Astoria, Oregon, in ‘Goon Docks’
– a coastal village in which various inhabitants are in grave danger of losing
their homes to an encroaching country club. Forlorn, a group of children – nicknamed
‘the Goonies’ gather for their final weekend together. The brood includes idealist,
Mikey Walsh (Sean Astin), his elder brother, Brandon (Josh Brolin), the resourceful,
Richard ‘Data’ Wang (Jonathan Ke Huy Quan), Clark ‘Mouth’ Devereaux (Corey Feldman),
and, chubby and accident-prone, Lawrence ‘Chunk’ Cohen (Joe Cohen). As the boys
are inquisitive and bored, they eventually find their mischief in rummaging
through the Walsh family’s attic where they come upon a rare doubloon and a map
professing the location to One-Eyed Willy’s infamous pirate ship, rumored to still
be laden with treasure. The brood elects to keep Brandon in the dark regarding
their ‘discovery’. However, Brandon soon makes chase, accompanied by Andrea
Theresa ‘Andy’ Carmichael (Kerri Green) – the girl who is just crazy about him,
and, her friend, Stephanie Steinbrenner (Martha Plimpton). Arriving at an abandoned
restaurant on the coast, the goonies quickly learn the place is a hideout for
the Fratelli crime family: Francis (Joe Pantoliano),
Jake (Robert Davi) and their disreputable matriarch, Mama (Anne Ramsey). The goonies
also discover a tunnel beneath the restaurant. But Chunk is almost immediately
taken prisoner by the Fratellis and imprisoned with their deformed, younger
brother, Lotney ‘Sloth’ (John Matuszak). Ironically, these two disparate
characters bond. Sloth frees them both and Chuck telephones the police,
pursuing the Fratellis who are, of course, after the goonies.
Led by Brandon, the goonies sidestep an assortment of
pseudo- lethal booby traps while remaining several crucial steps ahead of the Fratellis.
Arriving at the underwater grotto where Willy's pirate ship, the Inferno, is moored,
the goonies unearth the treasure, but are intercepted by the Fratellis, who are
determined to rid themselves of these novice fortune hunters by making each and
every one of them walk the plank. Mercifully, Chunk and Sloth arrive in a
calculated ambush that forces the Fratellis to flee. However, they make the
fatal error of seizing the riches from Willy’s scales – earlier cautioned
against by Mikey. This sets off Willy’s booby trap, the grotto disintegrating
all around them. With Sloth's help, the goonies and Fratellis narrowly escape
its demise, resurfacing on Astoria's beach where they are reunited with their
respective families and the police. The Fratellis are arrested – all except Sloth,
whom Chunk now invites to become part of his family. As the goonies attempt to
describe their adventure to their parents, the Walshes’ housekeeper, Rosalita (Lupe
Ontiveros) discovers Mikey’s marble bag overflowing in gemstones not seized by
the Fratellis. Mikey's father (Keith Walker) ebulliently tears up the
foreclosure papers, even as the Inferno, having broken loose from the grotto,
now appears to be sailing on its own, off into the distant horizon.
The Goonies is a picture of its time. Newer generations, not
unlike my own, may continue to find modicums of inspiration and joy, depending
on their age and picture-going savvy. I feel genuinely sorry for today’s child –
afforded every technological luxury, but the lack of wherewithal on how best to
compartmentalize, manage and otherwise appreciate and place all of this digital
hoopla into the proper perspective. The Goonies, with its dated premise
and impressions of just being a kid caught in a daydream from that glorious
epoch before the internet and cell phones made mindless, navel-gazing idiots of
us all, does not quite hold up once the viewer leaves his/her short pants
behind. But it does continue to harbor nuggets of pleasure that can afford the
first-time viewer of any age breathless admiration for Spielberg and Donner’s
ambitions to create one hell of a good thrill ride. I miss the 1980’s. It was
the best time to be a teenager in a decade of such diverse movie-going opportunities
to be spellbound in the dark. Homogenizing the cinema palette since has led to
more technically accomplished works for sure, and yet, strangely lacking a
sense of ballast, character and whimsy to make them half as memorable as movies
like The Goonies. No – this isn’t high art. But it remains an awful lot
of fun of the inimitable Spielberg ‘silly/adult’ vintage, made with a fervent
flair to stir the enjoyment of the audience with a broad stick – if only in
fits and sparks – to achieve that level of entertainment worthy of the capital ‘E’!
Shot photochemically in 35mm anamorphic Panavision, Warner
Home Video marks The Goonies 35th anniversary with a new 4K
scan from an original camera negative, color graded in HDR10 for a truly
eye-popping experience. Colors crisp up over the old Blu-ray from 2010. Fine
detail abounds, with exceptions granted to the occasional optical and inherent ‘soft
focus’ around the edges of Panavision frame. Film grain is light and very
organic in its appeal. Contrast yields some excellent shadow delineation that,
on occasion, still leans to a dark gray. But spectral highlights are more vibrant.
Lossless 5.1 DTS advances ever so slightly with a more expansive presence in
general, crisp dialogue, capped off by atmospheric nods in the sides and rear
channels for SFX and music cues. Warner has not included any extras on the 4K
disc, but has deigned to stuff this set with a copy of the 2010 Blu which has
it all. Please note – the Blu-ray contains the same 1080p transfer from 2010 –
not this 4K upgrade! But it does have all the old extras; a ‘hidden treasure’
picture-in-picture viewing mode, audio commentary from Donner and select cast,
a brief ‘making of’ featurette, several deleted scenes, Cyndi Lauper’s music
video and theatrical trailer. Bottom line: The Goonies looks wonderful in
UHD. For those who already own the 2010 Blu-ray, some of the improvements here
will seem marginal at best. But on larger monitors, this 4K upgrade easily
bests any home video incarnation previously made available. Judge and buy
accordingly.
FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)
3.5
VIDEO/AUDIO
4.5
EXTRAS
2
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