The Goonies might be the most perfect kids movie ever made. There are bad guys and pirates and hidden treasure and a (sort of) monster and exploring and gadgets and it’s fun and funny. And incredibly it holds up well. Unlike most 80s movies that make no sense to a kid today who will wonder why someone just didn’t use a cell phone to solve the problem, The Goonies still works and is still great.
Obviously everyone has a different opinion on who the best Goonies are. Here’s my ranking:
- Mikey – Sean Astin
- Mouth – Corey Feldman
- Data – Ke Huy Quan
- Andy – Kerri Green
- Brand – Josh Brolin
And – holy crap! – I only just realized that Data and Short Round are the same kid!
2024-01-17: Dead links in this post have been removed and/or updated. I’d also like to note that I was very much aware that Ke Huy Quan played both Short Round and Data because my sister and I discussed this in the late 1980s, but I’d forgotten about that when I wrote this post.