This was originally written on July 15, 2006.

Ah the 80’s. When making movies was simple and easy. When all you needed was some cheesy dialogue, a few nut sack jokes, long montages set to cheesier music, and the go-to nerdy Asian kid actor Jonathan Ke Quan. If you could make simple actions like opening a gate door incredibly complicated and involve some type of ball (preferably bowling) then you were almost guaranteed a hit.

Ok, there were serious, art movies made in the 80’s, it’s just that I didn’t see any of them at the time. Hey, don’t blame me, I was just a kid. If you have to lay blame, go find my mother.

For me, the 1980s was full of the Goonies, Gremlins, The Lost Boys, ET, Indiana Jones, and freaking Return of the Jedi. T’was a glorious time filled with mayhem, action, silly comedy, and all the stereotypes you could shake a stick at.

Reliving my nostalgic memories is sometimes surprisingly good, and often quite frightening. The Lost Boys is embarrassing, while a film like The Goonies holds up amazingly well. Sure, it won’t go on any of my top 5 lists, but it is still an enjoyable, entertaining romp.

To gather up some plot points, the Goonies are a group of adolescent boys all living in a neighborhood that’s about to be turned into a golf course. If only they could come up with the money to keep their parents mortgage then all would be saved. Through some shenanigans, it turns out that two of the boy’s dad is a curator for a museum that just happens to have an attic full of pirate lore.

They find a treasure map and set out to find the pirate gold and save their neighborhood. Along the way, they run into some nefarious gangsters who become quite interested in the pirate booty.

Bountiful misadventures occur as both the Goonies and the gangsters run amok underground the city escaping all sorts of mad booby traps. The gold of course is found, and lost, and found again, well enough to save the day. The gangsters are caught and everything is hunky dory.

Did I mention Sloth? No! How could I forget Sloth? He is this giant disfigured character the gangster bad guys keep locked up because he’s family and a menace, or weird. Or something. Of course, he is really a Goonie at heart and once again a movie of the 80s shows us the way to acceptance and world harmony.