Stand By Me Rewatched

Last night I revisited one of my favourite films from both my teenage years, and to feature teenagers. (Well, kids somewhere between the kid and the teenager stage.) Of which there aren’t many. I was the right age during the 80s, but I never connected to any of the John Hughes movies emotionally when they hit the screen, nor to Heathers, though I thought it was witty and brilliant. To me, there was always a sense of artifice, and of alien-ness; American high schools seemed to be exotic places featuring stylized creatures not like the ones I actually got to meet when I participated in a student exchange program at age 14. No, if I have to think of a film not focused on adults but exclusively on kids which I completely fell for before being an adult myself, one immediately comes to mind: Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me, based on the novella The Body by Stephen King. Not having seen it for quite some time, I wondered whether it would hold up to my sentimental memories.

( Which it did, beautifully. )