What I Watched -- Stand By Me

In honor of its 25th anniversary, I watched Stand By Me again last week.  I had seen it a couple of times when I was younger, but there was some press about it's recent silver anniversary, so I thought I'd give it another go.

I remember liking the movie when I was younger, but also knowing that there was some stuff I wasn't getting.  Now I think I get it.

Stand By Me is a coming of age story, but is also a story about friendship, and especially (and somewhat unusually) a story about close friendships between boys.  The main character is Gordie Lachance, and he narrates the story in an extended flashback 30 years later.  The older Gordie is played by Richard Dreyfuss.

The adventure belongs to four friends from a small town in Oregon: Gordie (Wil Wheaton), Chris Chambers (River Phoenix), Teddy Duchamp (Corey Feldman), and Vern (a much chubbier Jerry O'Connell).  Vern finds out where the friends can go to see the dead body of a missing boy.  They leave on the overnight trek, hoping that identifying the location to the police will bring them fame and glory.

In their search for the boy's body, they also encounter leeches, junkyard dogs, trains, and their own weaknesses.  Gordie's older brother had recently died in a car accident, and his parents don't hide the fact that they wish it had been Gordie instead.  Chris carries the weight of the good-for-nothing reputation of his older brother, and fears he will never make anything of himself.  Teddy suffers emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his mentally unstable father, a war vet.  And Vern, poor Vern, was scared of his own shadow.

What I find remarkable about the film is the charming and innocent portrayal of the boys' friendship. It's understated. Often, coming of age stories are filled with dramatic, over-the-top moments of self-discovery, especially when coupled with a first romantic interest.  There is none of that in Stand By Me.  There are just four friends who go out for a walk and come home the next day to the same town they left, though they are subtly but importantly changed.

Gordie closes the film by asking himself the following question: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve.  Jesus, does anyone?"  Does anyone?

Bottom line: a poignant reminder that we will never be kids again.