A & E

As a child of the '80s (born in 1976), I take for granted that my tastes were formed during an extended low point -- if not the outright nadir -- in American culture.

Nowhere is that clear more than the movies.

The '70s are generally considered the last truly great epoch in American filmmaking. As the bloated studio system was breaking down, the balance of power in Hollywood briefly shifted to a few headstrong, ultra-talented writers and directors -- Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Paul Schrader, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman and others.

But, by late in the decade, corporate America mostly had bought up the remnants of Old Hollywood and its feuding family-run fiefdoms, gradually bringing it into line with Wall Street's bottom-line expectations.

Once, a few powerful personalities would occasionally risk utter ruin on a wildly unrealistic, risky stab at greatness like "Apocalypse Now," "A Clockwork Orange" or "The Godfather." But by the early '80s, Hollywood had been largely transformed into a profit-driven assembly line for blockbusters and star vehicles.

The early '90s saw an uprising of independent film, as a wave of young, talented outsiders with outsized personalities -- Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh and others -- pushed into the mainstream. Though they were mostly later co-opted by the Hollywood establishment, suddenly, making ambitious, challenging movies was in vogue again.

Sandwiched between these two fruitful decades was the '80s, a post-apocalyptic wasteland populated by irradiated mutants like Conan the Barbarian, Freddy Krueger and lots of Muppets-gone-bad -- "Gremlins" (1984), "The Dark Crystal" (1982), "Child's Play" (1988).

OK, so the '80s had very few truly great films. The decade has few equivalents to "Chinatown" or "The Deer Hunter."

But there was one thing about the '80s that redeems the entire decade in my eyes -- even the years with Mark Malone at quarterback, when I wasn't allowed to stay up and watch "The A-Team." A certain kind of movie got made in the '80s that virtually doesn't exist anymore.

It's hard to describe, and even harder to name. It's a very loose category, that can somehow embrace movies as different as "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981), "Ghost Busters" (1984), "Back to the Future" (1985) and "The Naked Gun" (1988).

I've been trying to come up with a name for this kind of movie for awhile, and have had no luck. "High-concept action-comedy" doesn't quite get there. Let's call them "Goonie Movies" for short, after the genre's iconic film, "The Goonies" (1985).

"High-concept" means that they all had some kind of wild, ridiculous basic premise that you had to swallow -- like an alien's arrival in "E.T." (1982), or the time machine in "Back to the Future" (1985). But if it was presented convincingly, you were ushered into a believable, internally consistent world and became invested in the characters' fates.

Goonie movies weren't "family films" in the sanitized, Disneyfied, G-rated sense. Somehow, they appealed to children, teenagers and open-minded adults at the same time. They usually featured children, or child-like characters, as protagonists -- and themes like learning to face one's fears, and taking responsibility when the befuddled, hopeless adults around fall short.

These movies really were usually funny -- packed with sight gags, gross jokes and character-based humor.

They were often a little scary. "Poltergeist" (1982) was originally rated PG, but it gave me nightmares for years afterwards. In fact, the film directly led to the creation of the PG-13 rating.

The evil crooks in "The Goonies" and vampires in "The Lost Boys" could be beaten with imagination instead of size and strength. This was a pretty empowering message for a scrawny little kid.

However, these films were rarely preachy or condescending. The main characters in "Goonies" were believably imperfect -- Mikey had an inhaler, Chunk was fat. They did stupid things, got in trouble, and had dirty mouths. But, as children, they still had a certain uncorrupted moral strength that the adult characters usually lacked.

The genre has its undisputed classics, like "The Karate Kid" (1984). But at the time, much lesser movies seemed just as compelling, like "Flight of the Navigator" (1986) -- about a boy who disappears aboard a mysterious alien spaceship -- and "Monster Squad" (1987), which involved a group of kids who battle Dracula, the Wolfman and a horde of other malevolent movie monsters.

"Batman" (1989) was perhaps the end of the era. It was a perfect Goonie movie. But for some reason, the genre dried up shortly thereafter. Maybe I just started growing up, and subsequent movies' magic was lost on me.

Now, we're reaching a point where most films seem demographic-researched and market-tested to death. This has its upside -- there's more niche audiences to target, so there's more variety, and many very different kinds of movies are getting made.

But the only movies that really have that wide-open kids-teens-some-adults appeal of the Goonie movie seem to be animated ("The Incredibles"), or based on a known quantity, like a classic book or comic ("Harry Potter," "Spiderman," et cetera).

So Hollywood, if you're out there listening, remember the Goonies. For the sake of the children.

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