When Steven Spielberg puts his name to something there is a pretty good chance that the project will become a success. There is just no accounting for the way things play out however as The Goonies, released in 1985, is certainly one of the most recognizable movies of the 1980’s but yet when it was first released it was a mild success at best. The Goonies is a typical 1980’s movie with a simple plot that employs over the top visuals to move the story along. The plot of The Goonies is probably one of the more ingenious parts of the movie along with the use of an actual pirate ship. The plot has a lot of twists and turns but is not really that difficult to follow. It involves a lot of strange characters and The Goonies itself helped to spawn such 1980’s iconic moments as the “I love Chunk” craze and the Truffle Shuffle which would become an act that would be repeated by children and adults all over the world for many years to come. It is hard to deny the impact of a movie like The Goonies that has children and grown adults lifting their shirts and proudly making their less than athletic midsections ripple like water. It also speaks volumes to the popularity of a movie like The Goonies when something as disturbing to look at as the character of Sloth becomes a beloved figure in American movies. Such is the stigma around The Goonies and such is the genius of Steven Spielberg.

The Goonies is about a group of friends who all live in the same neighborhood together and call themselves the Goonies. They are each individually equipped to help the group go on adventures and up until the point that the movie begins most of the adventures of the Goonies had been quite harmless and boring. Then land developers came in and bought up the neighborhood in order to turn it into a golf course. The Goonies’ leader Mikey Walsh, played by Sean Astin, finds a treasure map in his attic that shows him where the treasure of One Eyed Willy is buried. At the same time the Fratelli family has just escaped from prison and set up their secret hideout right over top of where the treasure is located. So now the Goonies have to find the treasure before the Fratelli’s do and try and save the neighborhood. That is what we mean when we say that the plot has a lot of twists but it is basically easy to follow. Within this plot we are introduced to a hideously deformed Fratelli named Sloth who the rest of the Fratelli’s keep chained down in the prison of the pirate ship that the family occupies. In the end the friendship formed by Sloth and the Goonie Chunk changes the entire story and has a huge impact on the ending of the movie.

The Goonies is remembered fondly by most people that grew up in the 1980’s whether they actually saw the movie or not. The music of Cyndi Lauper rings throughout the movie and is remembered as also being a big part of what made the movie so popular after the 1980’s was over. Something that is not common knowledge about The Goonies is that the pirate ship used in the movie is real and the scenes you see in the movie on the ship were really filmed on the ship. When production wrapped on the movie the pirate ship was offered to anyone who wanted to take it home with them. Sadly no one wanted the ship and it was eventually destroyed.