![]() ![]() The company is still making movies, and big ones at that-recently, Ready Player One, Men in Black: International, Cats (!!!!), and the Jurassic World franchise. But that critique doesn’t quite apply to Amblin Entertainment. “They don’t make ’em like they used to” is a prevailing sentiment in and around Hollywood, particularly when every major studio seems to spend most of its energy chasing the fumes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Now Spielberg has found an in-between niche, for young teenagers who have fairly sophisticated tastes in horror.” (Personally, the horror in question with The Goonies was Sloth, who scared the living shit out of 8-year-old me.) The general vibe behind Amblin’s kid-oriented films-less infantilizing than Disney, but not crossing the line to wildly inappropriate-was perfectly expressed by Roger Ebert in his review of The Goonies: “There used to be children’s movies and adult movies. Amblin is not strictly dedicated to kids movies-Spielberg’s The Color Purple came out the same year that The Goonies was released-but they embrace that association enough that an image from E.T. The Goonies is a touchstone in and of itself, but the film is also representative of the cultural impact of what I’ll call Peak Amblin Entertainment.Īmblin, the production company founded by Spielberg in 1970 and named after the director’s first released short film, is synonymous with a lot of ’80s classics: Beyond The Goonies, Amblin was responsible for Gremlins, E.T., Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and the Back to the Future franchise. THE GOONIES CAST NOW SERIESAnd the film’s cast and crew-including Spielberg, Columbus, and director Richard Donner-came together in April for the first episode of Josh Gad’s Reunited Apart, a YouTube series that raises funds for various organizations in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In February, Fox ordered a pilot from The Bold Type creator Sarah Watson for a show about a substitute teacher helping three students make a shot-for-shot remake of The Goonies. Calls for a sequel pop up intermittently. (The ship was hidden from the kids until the cameras were rolling so their genuine reactions could be captured on-screen.) It’s by no means a perfect film, but make no mistake, The Goonies still rips.Īnd even after 35 years, Goonies fandom has shown no signs of slowing down. Other elements of The Goonies remain endearing-especially the lovable young cast and the movie’s commitment to building practical set pieces, which included the construction of a full-size replica of a fucking pirate ship. How else would a film combine Indiana Jones–esque booby traps, secret pirate treasure maps, an over-the-top crime family, a black sheep of said family with facial deformities and the strength of an NFL defensive end, and the economic anxiety of a real estate deal destroying lower-middle-class homes to expand the town’s country club? (OK, the last part definitely came from an adult mind.) ![]() ![]() While not everything about The Goonies holds up well on a more recent rewatch-namely, the frequent fat-shaming of Chunk and pretty much everything related to Sloth-it’s an impressive sugar rush of ideas that feel like they were plucked from a kid’s frenetic imagination. (The finding secret treasure part more than dealing with a family threatening to stick your hand in a blender.) Perhaps my own obsession with watching The Goonies was caused by a subconscious desire to be able to do the same. Goonies screenwriter Chris Columbus said the original pitch for the film-the story was originally conceived by Steven Spielberg-boiled down to a basic idea: What would a bunch of bored kids get up to on a rainy day? Well, in this case, they settled on an adventure to find hidden pirate treasure whilst evading a bickering family of Italian mobsters. THE GOONIES CAST NOW MOVIETo this day, we have no idea why the movie about talking babies hitting up the Eiffel Tower was so enticing, but the enduring appeal of The Goonies is much easier to relate to. Growing up, my sister and I had a tacit agreement that when we couldn’t settle on something to watch, we would put on The Goonies or, for some reason, Rugrats in Paris. There’s a very good chance that I have watched The Goonies more times than any other movie in my life. Welcome to The Ringer ’s Return to Summer Blockbuster Season, where we’ll feature different summer classics each week. 2020’s summer blockbuster season has been put on hold because of the pandemic, but that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the movies from the past that we flocked out of the sun and into air conditioning for. ![]()
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