Stand By Me... Lives UP!

 

In memory of Rob Reiner, we reviewed his self-declared favorite of all the movies he directed, Stand By Me. Of course this movie lives up. 

Other people have described Stand By Me as triggering nostalgia for a time that most of us didn't actually experience. This movie portrays childhood in the late 1950s (and filmed during the 1980s - another era also known for hands-off parenting). It invokes a memory of freedom, exploration, morbid curiosity. It reminds us how it felt not having parents, bosses, or authority figures hovering over us at all times... and a memory of not being reachable anytime, anywhere on a cell phone.

The 12 yr old boys in Stand By Me decide to spend their Labor Day weekend hiking 20-30 miles to see if they can find the body of a missing boy. They pre-arrange an alibi that they're sleeping over at Vern's house... but ultimately, none of their parents ever ask. 

In the 1950s (and the 1980s), parents accepted a certain lack of control about their kids whereabouts. They didn't arrange playdates, karate classes, piano lessons, soccer practice, theater rehearsal and then just hover there for two hours feeling annoyed. Seriously. When did parents sitting through practice become a thing? Nobody enjoys that. 

In these earlier eras, kids teamed up into little gangs and went exploring. There was no way to find us, and our parents didn't try to...

Watching Stand By Me as adults, Jess and I both instinctively reacted with 2000's parent mentality: 20-30 miles?! What if these 12 yr old boys get lost or injured? They don't have cell phones! Uh-oh, they shouldn't be breaking-and-entering in the junkyard. Oh no, they lit a fire. Oh My GOD, THEY BROUGHT A GUN!

Ultimately, though, the memories of our own unmonitored, unsupervised, un-micromanged childhoods won out. We love this movie.

Stand By Me reminds me of how Meaghan and I used to ride our bikes down to the church parking lot and then free solo our way onto the church roof (and how the priest used to scream at us to get down!). It reminds me of how the neighborhood kids used to pile up all of our cap gun caps with dried pine needles and wood chips to see how big a fire we could start. It reminds me of sledding off the traps at the golf course, and having to bail off the sled before falling into the ice cold creek at the bottom.

These days, I've seen 12 yr old boys who aren't allowed to cut their own food. Maybe their parents will allow them to use a steak knife when they get their driver's licenses. Maybe not. The only unsupervised place for kids to explore now is probably on their phones. And that sucks. We miss the good old days.

Listen to all our thoughts on Stand By Me below, on YouTube, or on your favorite streaming platform.