Coming-of-age metaphors don’t get any blunter than a group of preteen boys following a set of railroad tracks to a classmate’s dead body, a sobering testament to the fragility of life and a sign that their own futures are not guaranteed. The Stephen King novella that would become Rob Reiner’s Stand By Me is simply called The Body, and there’s no doubt that commercial considerations factored into naming the film after the song that blankets the soundtrack. Yet the enduring magic of Reiner’s film lies in the tension between this bleak journey and the nostalgia and warmth that keeps complicating our feelings about it. Between those two poles is a bittersweet tone that perfectly suits the material, the rare example of an adaptation that benefits from softened edges.
Though Reiner kicked off his career on a legendary heater that opened with This is Spinal Tap and would go on to include The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally … and A Few Good Men, Stand By Me was just his third feature and an early showcase of his versatility. His deft comic touch is not only essential in maintaining tonal balance, but important in suggesting what these four wayward boys mean to each other. Between the loose talk about Annette Funicello’s expanding bust on The Mickey Mouse Club and a Wurlitzer soundtrack of novelty singles like Lollipop and Yakety Yak, it can be easy to forget the anger, pain and dread that’s always simmering close to the surface. They laugh to keep from crying and occasionally don’t succeed.
Though set a few years earlier than American Graffiti, Stand By Me feels like a natural companion to it, another radio-friendly nostalgia piece about a transitional moment for male friends in small-town America. Both films are death-haunted but the difference is that the characters in American Graffiti, who are reaching young adulthood at the cusp of the Vietnam war, don’t know what the future holds and writer-director George Lucas saves that bummer news for the epilogue. The boys in Reiner’s film know what lies at the end of a 20- to 30-mile hike down the tracks and their attraction to the novelty and notoriety of seeing a dead peer turns morbid. Their steps grow heavier by the hour.
The more direct tie-in to American Graffiti is Richard Dreyfuss as Gordie LaChance, who narrates his memories as a novelist and father who’s gotten the perspective he and his buddies lacked as 12-year-olds. Flashing back to Labor Day weekend in 1959, the film casts Wil Wheaton as young Gordie, whose intellect and storytelling wizardry already puts some distance between him and his three troublemaking friends, who are bound for trade school at best. There’s not much to do in the Oregon backwater of Castle Rock, so when Gordie’s pal Vern (Jerry O’Connell) overhears his older brother talking about where they found the body of missing boy, the group’s curiosity is piqued. The two other no-goodniks in the gang, Chris (River Phoenix) and Teddy (Corey Feldman), come from broken homes, so they’re all too happy to lie to their parents and join the hunt. They figure they’ll be stars on the local news.
Even when he’s writing horror novels around this period, like the first half of It or 11/22/63, King’s affection for the late ‘50s and early ‘60s of his own adolescence is boundless and those fond memories flow through Stand By Me. (Between this and his 1990 adaptation of Misery, which plays off an author’s relationship with his fans, Reiner would become King’s unofficial screen biographer.) Small details like the boys singing the theme song to the TV western Have Gun – Will Travel or musing about cherry-flavored Pez or “what Goofy is” fill out the milieu before the fun pops like bubblegum. As Dreyfuss describes it, a jovial night around the campfire featured “the kind of talk that seemed important until you discover girls”.
Reiner stages some fun scrapes along the way, like a confrontation with a notably meek junkyard dog and a mad dash across a bridge as a train unexpectedly bears down on them. His work with his exceptionally talented young cast, too, establishes a relaxed camaraderie that pays huge emotional dividends later, when they’re closer to the end of the line. Much has been made about how Feldman’s angst about his troubles offscreen feeds into his startling reserves of anger as Teddy, a boy whose father once held his face to the stove. Wheaton, too, has affecting moments as the lesser son of parents who grieve his late older brother (played in flashbacks by John Cusack) and make him feel like the wrong kid died.
Yet Stand By Me is another reminder of how generationally special Phoenix was as an actor, here in just his second feature after appearing with young Ethan Hawke in Explorers a year earlier. His Chris is a tough kid who seems to fit the mould of a sadistic greaser like the one played here by Kiefer Sutherland, but Phoenix plays him with astounding sensitivity, especially when Gordie needs a lift. Chris, Gordie and their buddies are expected to mask their vulnerabilities, and one of the film’s most effective gambits is how it contrasts these boys with Sutherland’s gang, who are inevitably cowed by his leadership. Phoenix’s Chris charts a more empathetic course.
There are times when Reiner tilts too far into sentimentality, especially when Dreyfuss’ narration reaches for emotions the film might better grasp without a personal story seeming like grist for a novelist’s mill. Yet Stand By Me does well to preserve the R-rated saltiness of King’s world – it’s always more bracingly profane than you remember – and that helps it land more authentically than popular TV imitators like The Wonder Years and Stranger Things. These innocent boys strike out looking for a taste of adulthood and the film captures the feeling in all its pungency.
Stand By Me is available on HBO Max in the US, Now TV in the UK and Tubi in Australia
