It's Racist Toward Asian Americans
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The '80s were a more innocent time, especially for filmmakers and audiences who enjoyed to stereotype minorities. You could barely throw a Rubik's Cube in a teen movie from the decade without hitting a broken-English-speaking Asian character who was good at math and science, sneaky in some way, a kung-fu master, and/or totally asexual.
In The Goonies, that character is Data, played by Jonathan Ke Quan.
Data embodies almost all of the major Asian stereotypes: he speaks English as a second language and his trouble with pronunciation is the butt of many "jokes"; he's smart and good at math (it's right there in his name!); he's an inventor of impossible gadgets he keeps hidden in his huge trenchcoat (sneaky, see?); and he is the only Goonie who shows no interest in flirting with the girls when they turn up (asexual).
The only Asian stereotype not slapped on Data is "kung-fu master," but not to worry: Ke Quan got to do that one as Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
The worst part here is that even though he's presented as a genius, Data isn't actually written as smart. His gadgets are unnecessarily complex and impractical, and he makes some pretty stupid decisions. Towards the end of the movie, he doesn't even know what equipment he's actually carrying.
The Kids Are A Bunch Of Little Jerks
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Every member of the squad, even Mikey (Sean Astin), is a terrible person. The Goonies are messy, disrespectful little liars who are always cutting each other down, physically abusing each other, and looking for ways to humiliate or hurt people outside their goofy club.
Sure, there are much worse people in the movie trying to kill them, but that only gets you so far.
It would be a lot easier to sympathize with the Goonies if at least one of them was shown to be, at their core, a decent person or someone the audience can care about. That should be Mikey, the de facto leader, but even he picks on Chunk (Jeff Cohen) and throws around insults with the worst of them. The first thing he does when the group is captured at the Fratellis' hideout is to concoct a reason to abandon his friends and go looking for the treasure by himself, which leads to his discovery of Sloth (John Matuszak).
We're supposed to like these kids?
The Whole Movie Is Populated Entirely By One-Note Characters
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A sure sign of lazy ensemble writing is including a bunch of one-note characters who never grow beyond their single character trait. But The Goonies is considered a classic despite being a textbook example of this.
Every character in the movie has one "hook" and sticks with it to the very end.
Mikey is the quiet leader. Chunk is the clumsy fat kid obsessed with food. Brand (Josh Brolin) is the overprotective big brother. Data is the cunning Asian kid who's good at science. Mouth (Corey "Surely This Level Of Fame Will Last Forever" Feldman) is obnoxious. Sloth is a misunderstood gentle giant. And so on.
None of this changes by the film's end. You could put some spin on it and call them archetypes, I suppose. You could also settle for a C in screenwriting class.
The Goonies Tries And Fails To Be Two Movies At Once
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Tonally, The Goonies is all over the place. It's a thriller about some plucky suburban kids trying to outsmart a ruthless family of criminals. But it's baked into a kid's adventure movie about a group of friends searching for lost pirate treasure. The filmmakers also sprinkle in a dose of light horror and slapstick comedy for seasoning.
It's trying to be all things to every kid and, in retrospect, it doesn't pull this off as well as we all seem to think it did. The fan video above shows just how terrifying this movie really is.
Sloth Is In The Wrong Movie
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Look at the guy. That makeup job shouts The Hills Have Eyes. His voice and screams are blood-curdling, like something right out of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He's a big, gross, pin-headed monster with mutant eyes, and he's more likely to induce nightmares than laughs.
Why he's in this movie is anyone's guess. Someone must have thought he would be funny. They were wrong.
The Police Station Is Way Understaffed And Manned by Idiots
The movie opens with Jake Fratelli (Robert Davi) escaping jail by faking his suicide. It turns out that was unnecessary because there's only one guard on duty, and he has the glassiest glass jaw ever.
Jake basically strolls right out of the police station, with no one aware anything's amiss until he's already out the door.
At this point, the four other policemen on duty come rushing out to catch him... while still putting their uniforms on. Do the Astoria Police have sleepover nights? Were they practicing their strip search technique? Whatever the answer, they clearly weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing, which is keeping the building secure enough to hold dangerous thugs like Jake.
Wait, Was That Chase Scene Just A Jeep Commercial?
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After escaping from the world's most incompetent police force (seriously, officers, that fire was like six inches high) the Fratellis make their getaway in a Jeep Cherokee. You know it's a Jeep Cherokee because they show the logo approximately 1,056 times.
What was your endgame with this one, Jeep? Showing off how efficiently your vehicle can elude law enforcement?
Things come to a head when Mama Fratelli (Anne Ramsey) actually tells her sons, "Trust in your old mother, boys. Throw it into four-wheel drive and hold on to your hats," followed by a lingering shot of her shifting the car into FWD. Who casually mentions a car's feature like that? Regardless, the Jeep then proceeds to smoke every other competitor in some kind of truck race on the beach. Because, surely, the other racers (who actually knew this event was coming up) didn't train or modify their cars in any way to be good at maneuvering in sand. That would be as ridiculous as a Jeep Cherokee losing at something.
That's A Really Dumb Way To Open A Gate
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The Rube Goldbergian traps in One-Eyed Willy's D&D lair at least serve the purpose of advancing the plot. But what's up with that weird contraption that opens the gate at Mikey and Brand's place in the first act?
Why does it rely on scaring an egg out of a live chicken? That would make it effective only once a day, at most.
There's no way Data designed that for them, even if he is their next-door neighbor. Stereotypical Asian geniuses are too smart to hinge their design on such an unreliable element. It just goes to show you that prejudiced Hollywood writers aren't nearly as smart as the Asian super-geniuses they keep dreaming up.
This bonkers contraption doesn't even reveal anything good about Mouth, either, who's already been established as a smart-mouthed bully. It mostly just serves as an excuse to have the fat kid humiliate himself for the privilege of having people who are supposed to be his friends give him permission to come through a perfectly functional gate.
Aren't kids just so precious?
The Story Of One-Eyed Willy Makes No Sense
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Forget historical accuracy. It would have been the Spanish, not the British, who chased One-Eyed Willy in the Pacific in 1632. The folktale itself is ridiculous.
One-Eyed Willy and his crew got trapped underground by the British and decided to spend their time and resources carving out a dungeon crawl for future D&D LARPers instead of, you know, maybe digging their way out or something? Maybe they could've just let the British believe they were dead and hid their treasure somewhere nearby.
How dumb did story writer Steven Spielberg and screenwriter Chris Columbus think '80s kids were?
Don't answer that.
Brand Survives An Attempted Murder That Should Have Killed Him
Apparently, the town of Astoria, OR, was populated entirely by sociopaths in the '80s. What else explains how nobody ever comments on the fact that Troy (Steve Antin) attempted to murder Brand by running him off a cliff?
If this is what the typical residents of Astoria are like, it's no wonder the Goonies are considered the nice kids in town. At least they're not going on killing sprees (although Brand had just committed assault and theft against a little girl).
That fall should have killed Brand, or at least caused him some pretty traumatic injuries. But moments later, he turns up at the Fratelli hideout with nary a scratch on him. Brand is invincible, it seems. But that makes sense, because he's actually Thanos, anyway.
The Girls Were In The Car That Almost Killed Brand
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Speaking of Brand's attempted murder, the girls from the car that ran him off the road - Andy (Kerri Green) and Stef (Martha Plimpton) - also mysteriously turn up at the Fratelli hideout because they got sick of Troy's psychopathic shenanigans and Andy thinks Brand is way more scrumptious, anyway.
But that doesn't explain how the girls knew where Brand was or how they got there so quickly. In fact, the movie never explains that. Given that Brand is secretly Thanos, maybe the girls are mutants or Inhumans or some other kind super-beings, and The Goonies is secretly a Marvel prequel movie in disguise.
How Did The Newspaper Print That Article So Quickly?
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A few short hours after the Fratellis escape custody, a local newspaper releases an article detailing the incident. That's not how anything works. There is no way the newspaper could have rounded up the necessary information, mugshots, and interviews needed to create that article in one morning, and that's not even getting into the logistics of printing!
With that lightning-fast turnaround, it's no surprise the editors didn't catch the errant apostrophe in "Fratelli's."
Who Installed The Plumbing In The Pirates' Hidden Tunnel?
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So, the Goonies find the map to the pirate treasure, and they're following it through a series of secret tunnels carved by One-Eyed Willy's crew 300 years ago. Remember that word "secret" - as in "no one knows about these cave complexes that lead to a lost pirate fortune."
But it's only known to the Goonies, the previous treasure hunter in whose footsteps they're following, and... whoever the heck installed all the pipes under the country club. The contractors on that job must have found it awfully fortuitous that someone had already carved all those tunnels for them.
It just begs the question of how the contractors found those tunnels in the first place. Why they didn't bother following any of them to either get killed by one of Willy's booby traps or stumble upon the treasure and claim it for themselves?
Remember, this was a movie written by Chris Columbus and Steven Spielberg and directed by Richard Donner. They're not supposed to make these kinds of rookie mistakes. Maybe it was the script consultant's oversight.
Chattering Teeth Aren't That Strong, Dudes
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Let's talk about Data's gadgets - specifically, the Pinchers of Peril, a chattering teeth device he used to save himself from certain death in the spiked pit trap by shooting it like Batman's grapnel gun or Spider-Man's webs. The plastic teeth latch onto a stone outcropping, and the Slinky they're attached to slows Data's fall and stops him just short of impalement.
No. Just, no.
That poor kid would have gotten skewered. Wind-up chattering teeth are made out of plastic, not adamantium. Despite the presence of future-Thanos in the cast, this isn't a Marvel movie. Also, if Data really is the stereotypical Asian super-genius he's supposed to be, what's wrong with, you know, just a real grappling gun? There's no way he'd design such a useless tool as a chattering teeth gun.
If you're going to write racist tropes, at least be as smart as they're supposed to be. Otherwise, your intrinsic bias will stand out like the huge plot holes at the end of The Goonies.
The Climax Is Full Of Giant Plot Holes
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At the end of The Goonies, Mama Fratelli triggers One-Eyed Willy's final booby trap, an elaborate device that causes a massive cave-in, and it creates a new opening to the outside world that's big enough to sail a pirate ship through. That's not even a booby trap, really. It's more like a booby escape.
But this whole story depends on One-Eyed Willy and his crew having been trapped underground. If they built a device that could have freed them, why didn't they use it? Instead, they apparently sat around a table trying to eat all their gold or something, and all died at the same time.
Because, according to the legend, Willy killed them all to prevent them from getting to his treasure - the treasure that was sitting right in front of them when they died along with Willy.
Yeah, Willy died, too. Whatever he did to kill his men also proved fatal to himself. That defeats the purpose of his elaborate plan to build a giant booby trap that could easily free him but one he'd chosen not to use. Why? Because it's in the script that way.
Oh, and that Asian stereotype super-genius techno-wizard who always has just the right gadget to save the day? He doesn't know the difference between a candle and a stick of dynamite.
This Whole Thing Was A Nightmare For Rosalita
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Early in the film, we see Mrs. Walsh (Mary Ellen Trainor) hire Rosalita (Lupe Ontiveros), a house cleaner who speaks only Spanish. Wait, how exactly did the English-speaking Mrs. Walsh even hire her?
Mrs. Walsh has Mouth translate her cleaning instructions to Rosalita.
Because he's a consummate jerk, Mouth instead does things like warn Rosalita of the sexual torture dungeon in the attic and threatens her with captivity in a closet without food or water if she steps out of line. It's, you know, fun stuff like that. Rosalita clearly believes him, as she jumps in actual terror when she gets touched on the shoulder from behind. Yet, at the end of the movie, Rosalita is with everyone else on the beach. That means she spent the entire movie cleaning the Walsh house with the fear that if she messed up, she'd be unlawfully imprisoned in a closet. Remember, no one speaks Spanish besides Mouth, so she couldn't have had the actual situation explained to her. The poor woman must have been scared out of her mind.
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Revisiting Childhood FavoritesLists that dissect and analyze (and possibly ruin) some of the movies and TV you watched over and over and over and over when you were a kid.
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Revisiting Childhood Favorites
Lists that dissect and analyze (and possibly ruin) some of the movies and TV you watched over and over and over and over when you were a kid.
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