Stand by Me

I went to EzyDVD today to check out the DVD sale and found out that they have ‘Stand by Me’ for $9.95 – so I bought it as well as ‘A Fish Called Wanda’. I have watched ‘Stand by Me’ for a bazillion times but still I’m not sick of the movie at all.

The movie chronicled the journey that ‘Gordie’ (Wil Wheaton), ‘Chris’ (River Phoenix), ‘Vern’ (Jerry O’Connell), and ‘Teddy’ (Corey Feldman) made in 1950s to find a dead body. The movie was made in 1986 and directed by Rob Reiner, based on a novella written by Stephen King. I watched it first in the late 80’s when we rented the VHS from the local rental shop in Bandung. I related a lot to the characters in the movie because I was at a similar age to the boys – I was like Gordie, sensitive, sensible, the one with the brain as opposed to Chris, who’s a real boy’s boy. In the movie, Gordie turns up to be a writer at the end – maybe that could’ve been my career if I hadn’t taken Computer Science at uni *grin*. ‘Stand by Me’ is funny, touching and tells the story of friendship really well – it touches the issue of parents who don’t openly show their feelings towards their kids, as well as the camaraderie that one has during childhood. Definitely one of my favourite movies – it does have coarse language and violence but oh, it’s so well made (if you have seen this movie before you’d understand when I mention the pie-eating contest and the scene with the leeches). 🙂 It was also the first time that I saw River Phoenix who I idolised when I was a kid. His character in the movie, ‘Chris’ – is the kinda boy that I never was. River Phoenix was a great actor, too bad he messed with drugs and died young in 1993. Rest in Peace, man.

So this is how I spend my Friday evening – reminiscing over my umpteenth viewing of ‘Stand by Me’ – through my new DVD this time so I can retire the dodgy VCD that I bought in Indonesia many years ago. It’s the kind of movie that make you wish you were a kid with healthy imagination, lofty ideas, and simple concepts … (like what kind of animal is ‘Goofy’?) 🙂