40 Years After Its Release, ‘The Goonies’ Is Great Birth Control for Childless Millennials

I want to start by making it clear that no one loves children more than I do. Even when I was younger, I was one of those kids who was always entrusted with babysitting or looking after others because, as much as I was a menace in my own right, I was also responsible. I was the cousin who would make sure everybody packed their backpacks, brushed their teeth and said their prayers before bed.

Even today, there’s a fair number of people who trust me as the fun aunt who can simultaneously serve ice cream for dinner, but also bring down the hammer as needed. And with two nephews of my own, I can be the deputy parent when called for, gladly.

A recent rewatch of The Goonies, though, made me so glad I don’t have kids of my own yet. 

Released in 1985, The Goonies is the brainchild of Steven Spielberg, written for the screen by Chris Columbus and directed by Richard Donner. The film follows a group of misfit kids as they go on one last adventure to find a legendary pirate’s treasure, before their beloved “Goon Docks” is taken over and turned into a country club.

It’s a revered classic that has objectively stood the test of time, but my goodness, is it a tough watch. 

Right at the film’s outset, we understand that this movie is going to be chaotic. Between Mikey’s shabby house, the fact that we get the famous “truffle shuffle” in the first 10 minutes and Data’s crash landing into said home, it’s clear you’re going to be thrown right into the kids’ overstimulating environment.

Then comes the over-talking. Anytime the main quartet are together, there is no desire at all to listen to what the other person has to say. It’s a hodgepodge of verbal diarrhea that is so typical of those pre-teen years. As an aunt — and former child — I see this especially when I watch my 15-year-old nephew play video games or pick-up basketball with his friends.

There is so much shoving, so much bickering for attention and so much posturing. God forbid there’s a point to debate because the whole thing devolves into a screaming match. It’s a phenomenon that The Goonies filmmakers translated so well on screen. I found myself turning down the volume and fighting the urge to tell them all to pipe down.

When I first watched it as a pre-teen myself, I found the film riveting and funny, loving it for all the reasons anyone else does. Now, as an adult, I’m so glad that all that havoc remains in the preteen years. Imagine attending a work meeting where whoever has an idea just spews it right then and there, regardless of who’s talking. All you need to do is look at any millennial’s Instagram stories to know that that level of noise would destroy them for a week.

Key Huy Quan, who played Data, even spoke about that franticness of the film during an episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast back in 2024.

“We drove [director Richard] Donner crazy,” Quan fondly remembered. “We were, like, constantly jumping on him, screaming on set, overlapping each other all the time.”

Quan revealed Donner used the cast’s vibrant energy to fuel the film’s vibe.

“Back then, it was unheard of to do a movie where you have overlapping dialogue because of the editing,” he explained. “You always one actor finish their dialogue before another actor says his. But we were kids, and we were just talking over one another. The sound guy said, ‘We can’t have this.’ And [he was told] ‘Shut up. Just let them be kids. Just let them enjoy themselves,’ and that’s what we did. We were just being ourselves.”

In particular, that type of dialogue is fueled by Chunk. Expertly played by Jeff Cohen, no amount of snacks or dire life threats could ever keep that kid quiet. From the time he comes onto the screen, Chunk is rambling and weaving an elaborate tale about a car chase. It’s true, of course, but his friends immediately brush him off, given that he does this type of thing all the time.

His best moment comes when escaped convicts Jake and Francis Fratelli (and their enabling mother) capture him and force him to “spill your guts and tell us everything” about what he’s been up to. They want him to confess to the Goonies’ plans, but Chunk’s childish brain interprets that to mean he has to confess all his past indiscretions — the time he cheated on his third-grade history exam, the time he stole his uncle’s toupee to glue on his face for a game, and a very grotesque story about puke that really, you need to watch to appreciate.

For being a family of criminals, the Fratellis showed an incredible level of patience that even I couldn’t fathom having in that moment. I would have let him go free and gone about my business, just to save myself the headache.

Then there’s Corey Feldman’s character Mouth. For rule-followers like me, the prankster types were a nightmare. There was always some practical joke to be made — for example, incorrectly translating instructions to the non-English speaking nanny — which often hindered rather than helped the situation. In junior high school, the pranksters in my class always ensured that any perks we were offered were revoked and instead of spending half days watching movies like The Goonies, we’d instead get extra library time. It was infuriating.

The last character who triggered me was Sean Astin’s Mikey, the king of the inconveniently timed monologuing. And while I get that he wanted his friends to go on this big adventure because it was possibly the last time they would all be together, watching it as an adult just felt like torture.

In the famous “Goonies never say die,” scene the boys, along with Mikey’s brother Randy (played by Josh Brolin) as well as neighbors Andy (played by Kerri Green) and Stef (played Martha Plimpton), finally find a way out of their harrowing predicament. Right as Andy is about to climb to safety, Mikey embarks on a grand monologue about friendship and seeing things through. It was cute — touching even — but read the room! I can guarantee you, if any of my friends ever tried that on me, a family of criminals chasing us would be the least of their problems.

Innovative and experimental Data was by far the most tolerable of all the kids, mostly because he reminds me so much of my seven-year-old nephew. Sure, he might be the type to ask a thousand questions and bombard you with even more grandiose ideas, but I choose to believe that his inventor brain would keep him preoccupied, creating the pincers of peril, slick shoes and the like. Feed him and make sure he has some kind of activity going on, and I guarantee you that while alone, Data is actually chill.

The genius of The Goonies is in its ability to encapsulate that pre-teen/early teen angst. Nothing rings more true than the trope of the restless adolescent. It’s the unhinged curiosity, the innocence of never having extreme consequences and the desire to constantly hang out with your friends that makes this movie a treat for kids and a migraine-inducing nightmare for childless millennials like me.

Overarching the entire film, of course, is the idea that the Goonies are clearly a safe space for each other. Their beloved neighborhood is being pillaged by greedy corporations and they band together to eventually save it.

Rewatching the film 40 years after its release as a childless millennial, though, it made me remember that there really is no need to rush into having kids because once we’re past that cute little baby phase, you have to parent a human. And given the fact I, myself, am just a baby, we can put a pin in that for now.