THE GOONIES (1985) ** Back when no one could call Steven Spielberg on anything. You couldn't. Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Arc, E.T. ...if you weren't crazy into it you had to assume that the problem was you. Of course he became mortal shortly thereafter, right around as this was being made... I know he technically wasn't the director, but he wrote it (Chris Columbus shares this shame) and the Spielberg fingerprints are all over the place; it's a little too cute, over the schmaltz boundary, too manipulative in an updated homespun, too much fake insincerity without (sufficient) redeeming value; too many projects, magic stretched too far, played to lesser effect by inferior wizards. So what we have here is a kind of fun kids film in its own right, that keeps kind of trying to wink at the adults to make them feel complicitous...tries to find some common targets...then eventually gets stuck, not so much trying to figure out what its point is(for it's smart enough to know that it doesn't have one) so much as just trying to find anywhere dignified, or acceptable or at least applaudable to sit back down. I wasn't as mad at it at the end as I was at several points during the proceedings, so I guess it did ok at that. Known as Los Goonies , incidentally, in Argentina, and Gunisi in Serbia.
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