Stand By Me

 A group of four preteen boys hear about a kid's dead body and decide to hike to it in order to be heroes and/or get on tv. Along the way they learn a little bit about life and struggle and puking after a pie eating contest. It's got a great set of 80s kid actors (River Phoenix, Wil Wheaton, Corey Feldman, and Jerry O'Connell) who do a real good job goofin and cryin. I do question the frame of the author writing about this adventure, though - what does that add to the story? The ability to tell us who lived and who died? Like, why not add a narrator to a movie about King Arthur? "Everybody died a thousand years ago, deep." Also as a kid my neighbor and I used to blast the oldies soundtrack to this flick while drawing our own versions of Wacky Packages.

RATING: 83%