Stood By Me

At The House Next Door, in one of their nostalgic looks at an old movie, Matthew Cheney writes about Stand By Me (1986). The film was Rob Reiner's third, and there aren't many directors who had such a great start: Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing and SBM.  I loved all three, and the last put him in the big time.  He'd make other good films (and some bad ones) but I don't think he ever topped that original trilogy.

Stand By Me still holds up. Cheney thinks so too, though he's not as enamored of the film as he was when he was a kid.  Fine, but then we get this:

The last words of Stand By Me appear in silence on the computer screen: "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?"

The moment is presented with extraordinary restraint: the words alone, no music, no sound at all. The truth is in the text. Richard Dreyfuss then turns off the computer and walks out the door of his study, off to take kids swimming.

So that's what he takes with him?  The ending? It's probably the worst thing in the film.  The whole framing device is weak, but those final words seem absurd.  I recall John Simon's review, where he noted it showed the infantilism of American film.  I basically agree.  Yes, childhood memories are special, but I don't recall the friendships I had then being deeper than any other.  In fact, the friends that have meant the most to me are generally people I met in college or since.  That sentence on the computer struck me as simplistic, even false--something designed to wrap the story in a bow, rather than let it speak for itself.