Stand by Me (1986)

  This is another of those 80's classics that I'd never watched.  I know a lot of people have very fond memories of it but it just did not resonate for me.

Four boys set off on a 30-mile journey on foot to see a dead body in the woods in the late 1950's.  Along they way, they deal with weighty issues children really shouldn't have to bear.  Gordie (Wil Wheaton) has survivor's guilt after the death of his brother (John Cusack) stemming from the realization that his parents definitely loved their older son more.  Chris (River Phoenix) has been labeled a bad seed just because of the family he was born into, no matter what his actions are.  Teddy (Corey Feldman) idolizes his father, even after the man almost burned his ear off, and struggles to reconcile his fantasy with reality, and Vern (Jerry O'Connell) can't find the jar of pennies he buried under the porch because his mom threw away his treasure map.  Okay, so maybe they aren't all weighty issues.

Like I said, this movie is held in extremely high regard by people, and if I had seen it when I was closer to the target age, I might have been one of them but as a 32-year-old woman who has seen her share of dead bodies, it just didn't hold much emotional appeal.  However, it was completely worth it to see John Cusack and the other boys as young as they were when they filmed it.  Wil Wheaton still looks almost exactly the same but holy shit did Jerry O'Connell grow up.