Goonies for life! If you were a child of the eighties, you certainly remember this classic. If you haven’t seen it yet, think Stand By Me meets Indiana Jones meets Pirates of the Caribbean. The end result is a thrilling, funny, exciting, and really fun adventure flick that entertains everybody of every age no matter who you are. If it’s been awhile, put it on your movie downloads queue and relive the eighties with one of the all time great family adventure films.

The movie follows, who else, The Goonies. This gang of misfits, led by Mikey Walsh, is known around the city of Astoria, Oregon for always getting into some sort of trouble. The story really kicks off when the rich folks in town decide to buy up the neighborhood to convert it into a golf course. The city of Astoria is really gorgeous, and it’s too bad that it only features prominently in the first act of the film before it gets into the cave-dwelling adventure stuff.

The Goonies take it upon themselves to save the Boon Docks. They start by getting into the attic, where Mike’s dad, a museum curator, has a bunch of old pirate stuff stashed. They find a treasure map leading them to an old restaurant on the coast. The restaurant is run by the Fratellis, a low rent crime family led by Ma Fratelli, a serious ball buster who takes a sort of Bates Motel approach to mothering her children, played by Robert Davi and Joe Pantoliano. They have to figure out how to get under the restaurant to get the treasure without alerting the Fratellis and…

Does the plot sound complicated? It actually isn’t, it’s just really fast paced. Don’t worry, you don’t have to keep all of this in mind. From moment to moment, all the booby traps, gangsters and grown ups are really doing is giving the Goonies something to run away from while they bond as friends and seek out the treasure to save their neighborhood.

The movie is really a lot of fun. What makes it work is that it’s shot in a fairly matter of fact style. It doesn’t feel like a fantasy film, really. It feels just as real as Stand By Me or any other coming of age film. The fact that it has pirate ships and all kinds of crazy stuff like that, well, that’s sort of just the background of the movie.

When the movie first came out, it was actually considered to be just a bit TOO wild and fast paced. Times have changed, and with the manic pace and constant chase scenes of modern family films, The Goonies feels downright laid back in comparison.

Regardless, the film is a classic of the eighties era of adventure movies. Back when Indiana Jones was big, you had a bunch of people who wanted to join in and put their own spin on it. The Goonies was actually devised by Spielberg himself, so it was sort of his own take on his own ideas: Put kids in place of Indiana Jones.

It really is a classic in its own right, sort of the family film answer to Indiana Jones. If you remember it from your own childhood, now may be the time to turn your own children on to the adventures of Mikey Walsh and the rest of the Goon Squad.