Normal Boys and Normal Peril

Four twelve year-olds embark on a journey to find a dead body in 1986's Stand by Me. Based on a novella called The Body by Stephen King, the film has some of the ambient menace of King's horror fiction though director Rob Reiner and his screenwriters made numerous changes to the story. It's a decent film with some exceptional child performances. I watched it last night because I'd talked about it with one of the teachers I work with. It seems to be popular among junior high school teachers here in Kashihara, I think partly because the underlying story is about kids being abused by parents, brothers, or other people in their lives. It breaks my heart when I meet a kid who I slowly realise is probably in an abusive relationship with his or her parents. I've seen they tend to have special relationships with some of the teachers and staffs of the schools who dote on them a little more. I remember a girl at one school who tended to have wounds on her legs she explained as injuries from falling off her bicycle. She walked with a kind of swagger and talked like a gangster and I thought of her when watching Corey Feldman's character. I like how Reiner doesn't zoom in on his mangled ear but leaves the camera on him during some unrelated dialogue as the narrator (Richard Dreyfuss) explains it's from his dad holding his ear to a stove. All four kids went on to be stars--along with Feldman is Whil Wheaton, River Phoenix, and Jerry O'Connell. They're all pretty good in this. The dialogue is entertaining, especially when they argue about things like the species of Goofy or whether Mighty Mouse could fight Superman. Feldman's assertion that it couldn't happen because Mighty Mouse was a cartoon and Superman was a real guy feels pretty authentic for a 12 year-old in 1959. Most of the dialogue feels authentic and, as usual for movies from the '70s and '80s, it's so refreshing to see actors with realistic skin. But I got a little tired of listening to the kids argue all the time by about the halfway point. The climax doesn't quite work as Reiner tries a little too hard to make the experience of finding the body mix with the personal issues of Wil Wheaton's character. The film would have been stronger if the kids simply found the body, talked about it, and went home. The stuff leading up to the climax, though, is mostly pretty strong. Stand by Me is available on Netflix in Japan.