STAND BY ME (1986) **1/2 It was a trip where everything happened, but to the outside it only looks like four boys walking down a train track. The longest journeys, one might say, are all internal. Rob Reiner gives a Stephen King story a glancing blow of Spielberg-lite treatment, fails to find the music (other than the title track) that would have aroused real magic, but shoots Oregon perfectly. King presents real boys having real conversations, and the effective but imperfect cast builds well upon that foundation. River Phoenix and Corey Feldman give memorable performances as the bad kid who wants to be good, and the nut kid who desperately seeks military validation, respectively. Kiefer Sutherland usually seems like someone who might be named Ace Merrill, but I wasn't aware that the late '50s were accursed with such horrid hair dyes, along with everything else. I can't understand why anyone would consider Richard Dreyfuss as a bit-part narrator: his voice is nothing besides irritating and he's the sort of actor who needs ten times as many lines to even warm up. The pie-eating contest is Stephen King horror at its gnarly purplest.
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