Stand By Me (1986)

Directed by Rob Reiner

Released November 26th, 1986

Novel by Stephen King

Screenplay by Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans

Movie Synopsis Courtesy of IMDB

"After the death of one of his friends, a writer recounts a boyhood journey with his friends to find the body of a missing boy."

Stand By Me I think falls into the category of a John Hughes type of movie, which is to say it portrays kids in a real way. It isn't forced, it doesn't feel like adults trying to think like kids. The authenticity about it makes the audience remember back to their childhoods and things they used to do and think about at the age of 12 or 13. Yeah this movie could seem like The Breakfast Club or Fast Times at Ridgemont High in the sense that not a lot happens and we are just following around a group of friends. But when done well, movies like that carry more of an impact because they are relatable to the audience therefore the audience doesn't get bored by the lack of action. Which is exactly what this movie does.

Part of the appeal of Stand By Me is the idea of having that one group of close friends that you are never able to recreate. They normally only come around about once in your lifetime and it is a really special bond that you have for that time. Adult Gordie says that it is the friends you have at age 12 or 13, but I don't fully believe that. I think for him that is the age he had that solid group of friends. I know for me, it wasn't until my Junior and Senior year of high school that I found my group of friends like that. It is different for everybody, but the point is that pretty much everyone remembers a time that they had a group like that. Friends who you just like hanging around with everyday even when you have no plans in particular, where you can gang up on each other for one minute and then be laughing about it the next, friends who have your back no matter how much of a fool you make yourself out to be. While for these kids that group only lasted a little while, the memories of having that kind of friendship is going to last throughout their childhood and most of their adult life too.

Something that I find so different in this film and well in general to the time period of the 40s, 50s , and 60s, is how kids can go M.I.A for hours and days at a time yet no one is worried. Nowadays, if a kid is missing for about two hours people start getting worried. Kids can barely go on adventures outside anymore without adult supervision because of all the bad people out there who will kidnap or who knows what else to kids. The world we live in is so much different then the world our parents and grandparents grew up in. Kids back then could ride bikes all day long around the town and only have to make it home in time for supper, their parents never knowing where they are or what they are getting into. Kids could be gone for two whole days, like in the movie, and their parents don't even blink an eye. It sometimes feel like our generation and the one below us really missed out on a real childhood. A childhood full of adventure, imagination, spending summers outdoors everyday, getting into hard situations and figuring out how to get out of them without adults' help, and so on. Yeah, my childhood I did still spend a good amount of time outside but I constantly had to check in with my parents, couldn't stay out past dark, could only stay in the neighborhood unless an adult was with me, etc. It isn't the same as how it was back then. And well nowadays kids just sit inside on their ipads and don't even know what imagination is or how to ride a bike anymore. It is sad.

Okay a little bit about the movie now.

I find it funny how this movie is rated R. Huh? There is some swearing yeah, a little bit of blood, but that's it. There isn't any crazy violence, no nudity, no crazy racist comments/actions, etc. If anything this should be PG-13, simply because of the language. The fact it is rated R is crazy to me. But this just shows how the rating scales have changed over the years and how more is allowed in PG/PG-13 movies today than apparently it was back in the 80s.

I also think that Kiefer Sutherland in this movie looks like a young Michael Keaton. It really threw me for a loop and I had to pause the movie and make sure it really was Kiefer and not Michael in the movie.

Something funny you might not have noticed in the movie is an editing error. Watch this scene and pay close attention to Vern starting at 2:16.

You can see his mic pack coming out of his pants! While they probably re-shot the scene at some point, I guess when they were editing they forgot to take a different take or angle of that shot.

Something that was really disheartening in this film is Chris's views on how people stereotype him.

In this scene, we really see how hard it is growing up with a certain family name or siblings you are following in the footsteps of. We see this a little with Gordie too, with his brother, but I think it is more prominent with Chris because it is based on the stereotypes his family has. People see him not as an individual, but as someone who is born into a family with a bad name. Doesn't matter who he is as a person, only matters what his last name is. Which makes it hard for him to become his own person, be given the benefit of the doubt, or even giving the chance to prove he is not like the rest of his family. This shows just how hard it is sometimes to grow into your own person. Even when you have done nothing wrong, sometimes the world automatically puts you in a category that is hard to get out of. Lucky for Chris, though, he was able to get out of that stereotype as he grew-up.  

Gordie: "Do you think I'm weird?"

Chris: "Definitely."

Gordie: "No man, seriously. Am I weird?"

Chris: "Yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird."