Stand By Me (1986)
When four 12-year-olds - the smart kid, the tough kid, the fat
kid and the crazy kid - go tramping off through the woods to see
the body of a dead boy (who has been killed
by a speeding train) the bonds between them develop and break
along the way. It's touching but not mushy.
The year is 1959. The town of Castle Rock is so boring that the four
young kids hide out in a tree house smoking, swearing, playing cards, and comparing the size of each other's sex organs.
One tough guy (River Phoenix) is considered a juvenile delinquent because he stole the school milk money. Another boy has a father in the nuthouse. A
third boy is on the way to becoming the fat man in a circus sideshow. The central kid, who grows up to be the writer, has a father who hasn't paid any attention to
him since the day he ate laundry bleach under the kitchen sink.
Although nothing of any consequence happens to anybody in Stand by Me the kid with the big imagination passes the time by telling the other kids
stories.
The older boys in the town, who form a rival gang, amuse themselves by knocking people's mailboxes off their
fences from car windows with baseball bats and terrorising the younger kids.
Based on a short story by the prolific Stephen King - who publishes everything but his grocery list and calls it
literature - Stand by Me is a "coming of age" movie.
The situations are dreary, the kids' adventures aren't particularly imaginative (they fall into a swamp and get covered with leeches), and in the last two
reels Rob Reiner switches to some familiar teenage moralising in which the characters are exhorted to believe in themselves.
Stand By Me does, however, contain arguably the best vomit scene
in living memory . . .
"Suddenly Lardass opened his mouth. And before Bill Travis
knew it, he was covered with five pies of used blueberries. The
women in the audience screamed. Boss Man Bob Cormier took one look
at Bill Travis and barfed on Principal Wiggins. Principal Wiggins
barfed on the lumberjack that was sitting next to him. Mayor
Grundy barfed on his wife's tits.
But when the smell hit the crowd, that's when Lardass's plan
really started to work. Girlfriends barfed on boyfriends. Kids
barfed on their parents. A fat lady barfed in her purse. The
Donnelley twins barfed on each other, and the Women's Auxiliary
barfed all over the Benevolent Order of Antelopes. And Lardass
just sat back and enjoyed what he'd created: A complete and total
barfarama".
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