The Goonies (1985)

Before last week I don't have any memory of ever sitting down and watching this movie all the way through. Which is kind of funny considering that at my boyhood home circa 1986 it seemed like this movie was on a lot, which might be why I never sat down and watched it straight through. My dad really liked The Goonies though, and back then we used to sometimes tape movies off of HBO, and that was one of them. Once we accidently taped something else over my dads copy of The Goonies and for months afterword, whenever he needed some kind of moral trump card to use against me and my brother to get us to do what he told us to, he would simply say "you guys tapped over my Goonies tape" and we would comply. I remember that I took this very seriously at the time, like taping over the tape was a legitimate moral failing on my part and I deserved to be taken to task for it, looking back on it now I see it as pretty funny and a brilliant piece of parenting by my dad. The movie its self is a great family adventure film of the period, which borrows more then a little from the look and feel of Indiana Jones (Steven Spielberg was a producer and wrote the story the movie was based on). The film has its flaws, of logic and otherwise, but isn't meant to stand close scrutiny, its childhood escapism and accordingly its fun. ***1/2