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| Source: Wikipedia |
Being a Stephen King story, a bland writer protagonist faces a horrifying challenge. In this case, escaping the event horizon of a shithole small town in Oregon, the Maine of the Pacific Coast.
The other guys have their own problems.The chubby wimp is an outsider not part of the "in-group." The crazy daredevil nurses military fantasies and a bum ear. The tough loner, the "bad kid," watches out for the other guys -- a role River Phoenix nails to the wall like an agnostic praying mantis in an insect project gone unthinkably wrong.
On their journey to see the dead body, these preteen boys temporarily escape their homes, their problems, and upcoming junior high. Pressing and depressing adult expectations plague their lives: live up to your football champ dead bro, be a lunatic like your dad, be a bad egg like your dad, or keep on being a worthless wimp because that's your only identifying characteristic.
They talk, too. Topics range from high-concept life plans to whether Mighty Mouse could beat up Superman. When words get boring, they turn to underage smoking and drinking and hilariously misconstrued sexual speculation. And dick leeches, briefly.
But as the boys hurry to hog the glory of finding the body first, they run afoul of Murphy's Law and a pack of greaser punks. These losers chase the kids for unclear reasons, except that small towns are dull and the fifties had no Internet. These rebels spout arcane slang and wreak petty havoc and might actually spill blood when it comes down to it.
The result is a timeless coming-of-age narrative with a Stephen King twist: crude, cultured, bittersweet. For maximum multi-layered nostalgia, the grown-up narrator relays his boyish misadventures via the rose-colored filter of his top-of-the-line DOS word processor.
88 minutes.
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