This quick documentary is about as good as a making0of documentary can be at a diminutive 7 minute running time, but even though it's barely the length of the Cyndi Lauper song that underlies it, it still gives some great insights into the making of the film, which is a gigantic milestone in my childhood, I must say. It starts out with an interview of Steven Spielberg on the set talking about the movie, and it's pretty funny because he goes right into sort of a disclaimer about the film, as though people are expecting another Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Jaws or E.T. or something. He says something like, "Nothing extraordinary happens in this movie," which is funny because it became such an enduring classic.
I recently watched the documentary that came with the remake of Flight of the Phoenix, where it becomes clear what an emotional man Director John Moore is, and the stress and frustration that Richard Donner suffered through working with all the kids in this movie is pretty similar, giving a pretty good insight into how difficult directing a film can be.
The documentary has some pretty good on set footage of the shooting process, although as is almost always the case I wish they weren't edited so heavily. As soon as you start to see what's going on and remember the scene from the film it cuts to something else. There is an interview with Robert Davi, Joe Pantoliano, and Anne Ramsey (collectively the Fratellis) that I wish they would have shown more of, as well as some scenes where he's scolding the actors, everyone from the kids to the adults. There's some funny stuff of Richard Donner getting a little frustrated with most of the kids, and one memorable shot where he criticizes Robert Davi pretty heavily, tells him that everything he's seen him do so far is not even acting. That's pretty harsh!
Overall this is a great documentary, it's just too bad it's so short, but then again at the time it was made they may very well not have planned on the thing being anything more than a quick snippet to show on TV at some point, since DVDs were so far in the future, The DVD does include the Cyndi Lauper music video of Goonies are Good Enough, although it's this huge, lumbering storyline version of the video that was remade for the movie. I wish they would have included the original video that they showed clips of in the movie, I've never been really impressed by music videos on DVDs that are nothing but a lot of footage of the movie that the song is featured in, but oh well. Still pretty entertaining, and while the music video was too long and the documentary too short, they are still both worth checking out.
