Dream a Little Dream

For some reason, the 1980s had a rash of films in which the central theme was putting a teenager in an adult’s body, or an adult in a teenager’s body. 1989 had no less than five, from the obscure Vice Versa to the modern classic Big. Mike Rocco’s Dream a Little Dream tied the trend in with another 80s film trend, the two Coreys, Haim and Feldman. Having recently sat through 17 Again, I thought I would take a look at Dream a Little Dream and see if things were done better when this oddly-specific genre was in its heyday.

Corey Feldman plays the lead role, Bobby Keller. Corey Haim plays his best friend, “Dinger”; Haim broke his leg just shortly before shooting, and so Dinger had a few lines hastily added to incorporate the broken leg into the script. In the movie, Dinger’s leg was accidentally run over by his own mother and this pretty much sums up Dinger’s role in the film: he’s the unfortunate comic relief. Bobby has some more typical teen problems. He’s flunking all his classes (so is Dinger, but he doesn’t seem to mind), his parents (played by Alex Rocco and Victoria Jackson in fun small roles) don’t seem to understand him, and he has frequent run-ins with the school bully Dumas (Matt Adler). He’s also developing a serious crush on classmate Lainie (Meredith Salenger). That last is a problem because Lainie is the girlfriend of his other best friend, Joel (William McNamara).

The Goonies

One of the quintessential 1980s kids’ films, The Goonies is one of several that I am absolutely certain I saw as a child and yet have absolutely no recollection of seeing. But for most children of the 80s, this 1985 film is one of the most fondly remembered, and it’s a collaboration between three of the most renowned directors in adventure cinema — Richard Donner directs, and the story was written by Steven Spielberg and Chris Columbus. Plus, it’s set in and mostly shot in Astoria, Oregon, so as an Oregon native, there’s even a bit of a local connection — as well as an expectation, locally, to have seen it. So I had a lot of reasons to cross this film off my “to see” list.

The Lost Boys

Happy Halloween, everybody! It’s October 31st, and we’ve got one last Halloween Haunter to discuss before November rolls around and the blog returns to some semblance of normalcy, at least for a few weeks. While this month has been filled with an awful lot of pain and agony — on the part of your friendly neighborhood blogger more than the characters in these horror movies — for the big day I’m finishing on a relatively strong note, the 1987 vampire movie, The Lost Boys.

The Lost Boys is the story of brothers Michael and Sam (Jason Patric and Corey Haim), who are moving with their mother, Lucy (Dianne Wiest) to their grandfather’s home in Santa Carla after she has divorced their father. Lucy insists they’re going to love Santa Carla, but Sam can’t help but notice the welcome sign has been graffiti’d to add “Murder Capital of the World”. Not an encouraging sign. They get to their grandfather’s place, and after a brief freakout at his taxidermy shop, they settle in and get ready to adjust to their new lives and the eccentricities of their grandpa (Barnard Hughes).

Soon they begin to explore the boardwalk of Santa Carla, and all three transplanted family members find something that will become important to their immediate futures.