The ’80s Adventure Comedy Everyone Should Stream Without Netflix

With such a strange name, what is The Goonies actually about? A group of friends who call themselves “Goonies” because they live in “the good docks” are hanging out one last time because their parents are all facing foreclosure on their homes. When they find an old treasure map, they embark on a madcap quest to help their folks out, but that quest threatens to turn fatal once they run afoul of a local crime family.

If you’ve somehow never seen The Goonies, you may be surprised by the cast of well-known actors, many of whom have only grown more famous since the release of this movie. The film stars future Lord of the Rings star Sean Astin and future Everything Everywhere All At Once star Ke Huy Quan. It also stars genre icons Corey Feldman and Joe Pantoliano, not to mention future Thanos star Josh Brolin.

When The Goonies first came out in 1985, it wowed audiences, earning $125 million against an estimated budget of $19 million. The movie’s success shouldn’t surprise us that much, though: the screenplay was brought to us by future Home Alone and Harry Potter director Chris Columbus, based on a story by legendary director Steven Spielberg.

Speaking of legendary directors, The Goonies is directed by Richard Donner (the man who helmed the first two Superman movies), rounding out a dream team of creators who know how to create captivating children’s stories that still resonate with adults.

Certainly, The Goonies managed to resonate with critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the movie has a critical score of 77 percent. Generally speaking, critics thought the “mix of Spielbergian sentiment and funhouse tricks” could be a bit “noisy” at times, but they found the movie as a whole one “that will appeal to kids and nostalgic adults alike.”

In many ways, I am living proof of that particular observation. I absolutely fell in love with The Goonies when I was young because it had all the kid-friendly trappings, including a cool plot about finding lost gold that somehow also involved a friendly monster and a pirate ship. And, of course, I loved the youthful cast, seeing in their outsize onscreen adventure a mirror of the playground fantasies of myself and my own friends.

The Goonies hits quite differently when you watch it as an adult: for one thing, it’s far easier to sympathize with Brolin and the other teen characters as they try to keep the younger adventurers safe.

However, the fact that they get caught up in those same adventures is quite revealing, reflecting how all of us hope to keep our sense of childish wonder intact even as a cynical reality tries to pull it apart. In one crucial scene, Corey Feldman’s character straddles these different worlds, justifying stealing change from a wishing well because his own wish never came true, and he now wants nothing more than to take it back.

That scene always seemed important to me when I was a child, but I didn’t really understand it. Now, though, it’s achingly clear…Feldman is every single one of us who projected our hopes into a universe that managed to break our hearts with its cruelty and indifference. The movie isn’t bitter, though: along with Feldman’s character, we learn how meaningless it is to wish for a different world when your friends are your world, a sentiment that (God help me) even Deadpool would agree with.

REVIEW SCORE

The Goonies might be the most perfect comedy ever made, but will you think this movie is as valuable as hidden gold or as useless as a coin tossed into a well? You won’t know until you stream this adventure on Tubi for yourself. Ideally, you should watch it with your own cadre of childhood friends and embrace the film’s adorably heart-on-its-sleeve message: “Goonies never say die!”