80s Movie Review - Stand By Me

Director: Rob Reiner
Genre: Drama/ Adventure
Runtime: 89 minutes
Year: 1986
Starring: Will Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman, Jerry O’Connell, Kiefer Sutherland, John Cusack, Richard Dreyfuss

Description: After the death of a friend, a writer recounts a boyhood journey to find the body of a missing boy.

Review: The name Stephen King is easily linked to horror stories like “The Shining”, “It” and “Carrie”, but he also wrote some stories that fall in a different genre than horror. The movie  “Stand By Me” is one of them, which is based on the short story “The Body”. In this realistic drama we follow four teenagers in a coming of age story.
Those four boys are Gordie, Chris, Teddy and Vern. They grow up in a little town in Oregon. In the summer of 1958 a boy from their town goes missing. One of the boys overhears a conversation about the whereabouts of the dead body of the boy. The four kids decided to start a journey to find him. Their journey is more than just that, it’s testing their friendship and it’s the next step to adulthood.
Director Rob Reiner creates the perfect atmosphere and shows us the life of small-town American kids in the 50s. This movie makes you long for your own childhood, where a journey outside your town sounded like an adventure already.
River Phoenix, who unfortunately died too young, is the most impressive actor in the film. He manages to convince us as the tormented problem child. But also Will Wheaton, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell manage to impress. It’s touching to see how all these very different characters grow on you.
Simple dialogue, a beautiful story and good acting make “Stand By Me” a fantastic film. It’s on my favorites list.

Rating: 5/ 5