The Goonies takes place in Astoria, Washington. There, we meet a group of kids who call themselves "The Goonies". (Although, this is never really explained. They say that they live on the "goondocks", but what does that mean") Mikey (Sean Astin), and his brother, Brand (Josh Brolin), hang out with Data (Jonathan Ke Quan), Mouth (Corey Feldman) and Chunk (Jeff Cohen). For reasons which are left vague, the guys houses are going to be sold. Mikey's father works at a museum and while going through his stuff in the attic, the friends find a treasure map and the legend of pirate One-Eyed Willie. They decide that finding the treasure is the answer to saving their homes, so they set out on a quest. Little do they know that the notorious Fratelli family (Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano, and Anne Ramsey) is hiding out in the area where the treasure may lay.

Well, I wish that I had seen The Goonies in 1985. Not because I've been missing a treasure for all of these years, but because I would have been much more forgiving of it as a gullible child. Wow! What a bad movie. As noted above, the movie was produced by Steven Spielberg, who also wrote the story. The screenplay came from Christopher Columbus and the movie was directed by Richard Donner. Is that a dream team or what? The sets and locations are impressive, giving the film a good look. Unfortunately, the movie has the feel of something which was made by amateurs.

The biggest problems come from the story. I don't know if Columbus' script was woefully underwritten, or if problems arose in editing, but the story has huge gaps in it. It can be a good thing when a movie hits the ground running, but here we get kids/problems/treasure map -- GO!! within the first few minutes and there's no story to back this up. We learn that Mikey and Brand's Dad works in a museum, but why would he have so much of it in his attic? What insurance company would cover that? Again, the movie glosses over the whole "Goonies" thing (Is that a common term that, after 25 years, I'm still not familiar with?) and the "we're going to lose our house" plot. (This would have felt stale in 1985.) The characters get no development other than their surface traits (why does Mikey mess up certain words?) and we are simply asked to buy the fact that they are all friends. Of course, the problems could have come out in the editing room. For years, people have talked about the fact that an octopus is mentioned at the end, but there's no octopus in the movie. This Blu-ray Disc contains a deleted scene which shows the creature.

There are also issues with the movie's tone. I had planned to watch the movie with my kids, but they didn't have any interest (smart move). I'm glad that I didn't, as this smacks of the mid-80s Spielberg/Columbus "kids love violence and mild profanity in a PG movie" frame of mind. The opening shot of the movie has a man who has hung himself in a jail cell. It turns out to be fake, but still, that's quite an image for a family film. From there, the movie can't decide if it wants to be funny or an adventure, and thus, is neither. The Fratellis are both bumbling and intense, and their treatment of Chunk is pretty uneven. And then we have Sloth (John Matuszak), the monstrous man-child which The Fratellis keep chained in the basement. What is that all-about?

If the movie could have simply stuck to the adventure part, The Goonies could have been a great experience for kids and adults. There's no denying that the scenes in the caves, in which the kids are solving puzzles and dodging booby-traps, are interesting and probably laid the groundwork for some modern-day video games. But, these scenes are only a small part of a movie which, no pun intended, is all over the map. As it turns out, The Goonies are not good enough. Not by a long-shot.

The Goonies is responsible for a dump thing called the "truffle shuffle" on Blu-ray Disc courtesy of Warner Home Video. The film has been letterboxed at 2.35:1 and the Disc contains a VC-1 1080p HD transfer which runs at 23 Mbps. The image is fairly sharp and clear, but it does show some mild grain and some very minor defects from the source material. However, the image is a bit dark and this has caused the colors to look somewhat dull. For a Blu-ray Disc, the picture is notably flat and doesn't look very deep. I'm sure that this looks better than a DVD, but it's not a breath-taking transfer. The Disc contains a Dolby Digital 5.1 audio track which runs at 48 kHz and a constant 640 kbps. The track provides clear dialogue and sound effects. We get some nice surround sound action during the cave scenes, which also provide some minor subwoofer effects. However, the stereo effects are very meek.

The Goonies Blu-ray Disc itself contains a small assortment of extras. We begin with an AUDIO COMMENTARY with Director Richard Donner and actors Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Corey Feldman, Jeff Cohen, Jonathan Ke Quan, Kerri Green, and Martha Plimpton. The viewer can also choose a VIDEO COMMENTARY where we can see the speakers as they talk about the film. "The Making of The Goonies" (7 minutes) is a featurette from 1985 which is made up entirely of on-set footage and contains comments from Spielberg and Donner. The Disc contains three DELETED SCENES which run about 7 minutes. The most important thing here is a scene of an octopus attacking the kids. They mention it at the end, but we never actually see it in the movie. There's another scene which shows how they knew where to look for the treasure. The MUSIC VIDEO for "The Goonies 'R' Good Enough" by Cyndi Lauper is included here. The final extra on the Disc is the THEATRICAL TRAILER. The 25th Anniversary Set contains several more goodies. We get a The Goonies Board Game, an excerpt from Empire magazine which focuses on the longevity of the film, a reproduction of a 64-page souvenir magazine from 1985, and 10 nicely-sized storyboard cards.