Retro Rewind

Goonies Was a Balm For Millions of Kids Uprooted by Divorce

It was never quite our time, but it felt good to dream

Retro Rewind is a weekly series that reconsiders pre-2000 pop culture. More here.

Goonies is the quintessential 80s movie because it’s the one that makes me most remember what it felt like to be a kid at that time. It’s not my favorite 80s movie — that would be Back to the Future, which I covered in a previous Retro Rewind. But it, along with Back to the Future and Karate Kid, puts me most in the mind of my younger self.

You would be right to wonder why Star Wars isn’t on that list, but as Return of the Jedi hit theaters when I was only 5, it doesn’t have the same ‘growing up with me’ cachet as these other films. Star Wars is more like a found thing that predates me.

Technically it’s called ‘The Goonies’, but I’ve only ever used Goonies. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use the ‘The’ before. ‘The’ makes it sound buttoned-up and quasi-impertinent, and Goonies is neither of those things. Goonies is adventures and friendship. It’s buried treasure and booby traps and old pirate maps. It’s breaking the dick off your mom’s favorite statue and then glueing it on upside down because a penis still looks weird when you are 13.

As a kid, ‘happily ever after’ isn’t the promise of days of endless fairy tale wonder but a guarantee that nothing ever has to change.

Mostly though, it’s the childhood fantasy that we can somehow make everything better. As kids, we don’t understand why the world is the way it is, but we sure as hell dream about magically fixing it. Given Goonies released in the mid-80’s, when divorce was newly fashionable — the 1980s saw the highest divorce rates in the U.S. ever — it’s little wonder so many hold the film in such nostalgic esteem today. We were all having the same fantasy about repairing our suddenly broken families, and Goonies granted gossamer wings to such dreams.

Yeah, mom and dad don’t love each other anymore, but wouldn’t it be great if they did? Then everything would go back to normal, to the way it’s supposed to be, and we could get on with our Nintendo and baseball practice and riding our bikes with the kids we’ve known all our lives.

As a kid, ‘happily ever after’ isn’t the promise of days of endless fairy tale wonder but a guarantee that nothing ever has to change. That the life we know will be the only life we ever know.

That is the dream that Mikey, Mouth, Data, and Chunk chase, and eventually Brand and Andy and Stef, too. That they would be successful where their parents were not, and save their homes from foreclosure and an ignominious fate as a country club golf course. And that they would remain Goonies, forever.

Mikey: Don’t you realize? The next time you see sky, it’ll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it’ll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what’s right for them. Because it’s their time. Their time! Up there! Down here, it’s our time. It’s our time down here.

I moved a lot growing up; those words hit me in my soul. I have been there. I’ve seen foreign skies and alien towns and unfamiliar schools. Mikey and Mouth and all the rest had agency and an opportunity to affect their own lives. In reality, kids are but marionettes, moved about against our will. It is never our time until we become adults, and by then, the magic is long gone. As children, all we really have are our dreams. But what dreams are they.

Goonies reminds me of that fleeting time of early adolescence, when you are no longer a child but you’re still a kid, when your personality is largely formed but every new experience crackles with life-changing energy, when you aren’t yet driving and you are still pretending to be superheroes but hey — have girls always been so cute?

I had a huge crush on Andy — I always assumed it was spelled Andie, but Google tells me otherwise. She was older than me, and also a fictional character, but the heart is stubborn. And also stupid. She’s not my type at all. Well, what did I know. I was only a kid.

Mouth gets all the laughs, rightly so. It’s a little hard to see young Corey Feldman again, so animated and full of energy, knowing what life has in store for him. People nowadays see Mikey as a young Samwise Gamgee, but those of us who grew up with Goonies know it’s really the other way around. I personally always found Chunk annoying. But that’s what childhood is like, too: there’s always that one friend that irritates you but you hangout anyway.

Data though — he was my guy. I loved his gadgets, and his maniac energy. And the reveal at the end that he is just following in his father’s over-engineered footsteps? Priceless.

I always thought it was a little weird that the movie sorta kinda tried to make Stef and Mouth a thing. It’s gross, right? Like kissing your own sister. (By the way, Jennifer Barnett has a great article in which Martha Plimpton, the actress who played Stef, features heavily).

In a lot of ways, I saw myself most in Brand. The responsible older brother, forever looking after his kid brother. But also someone who was close to his brother, and not so mature that he’d turn up his nose at going on adventures. Although my brother is probably more of a Mouth than a Mikey.

It is impossible for me to think about this movie without immediately hearing Cyndi Lauper’s ‘The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough’. It is whimsical and slightly mysterious and fun, the essence of childhood bottled up in a sorta repetitive 3-minute song. I’ve heard it at least a hundred times and couldn’t tell you a single line of the song outside of the chorus. Loving something without really understanding it is maybe the best analogy for childhood.

Cyndi Lauper is about as 80s as it gets. ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ is probably more famous, but I prefer the Goonies theme song, in no small part because it features heavily into my favorite scene. Hell, in all likelihood, the scene is my favorite because of the song. It’s that good.

Quick aside – Sheila M. recently wrote a beautiful piece on Cyndi Lauper that any child of the 80s will enjoy. Highly recommended.

Now, about that scene.

The boys are back downstairs after discovering the treasure map in the attic. Cyndi Lauper is on the TV, singing the Goonies song. Brand is working out. While Cyndi goes on singing, the boys silently plot against Brand, tie him to a chair, and then peel out of there on their bikes. Brand eventually gives chase using Data’s sister’s bike, training wheels and all.

The entire sequence takes about 2 and a half minutes. There are no pirates or treasure or booby traps. It’s just a group of kids being kids, set to one of the most upbeat songs ever conceived. It’s the first scene I think of, without fail. It feels like the 80s I remember. We didn’t have any underground pirate lairs but we did have MTV, and it played music videos.

It feels like a million years ago. But it was our time.

Eric Pierce writes an irreverent newsletter about movies, TV, gaming, Star Wars, and why Timothy Olyphant is so damn charming. News, essays, and recommendations.