A lot of movies nowadays start with a title and work backwards (see Gnomeo and Juliet, Maid of Honor, etc.) Stand By Me could have very well been called Cry With Me, considering there’s a lot of youthful tears shed for a camp out. Or Stand By Me While We Look At The Decaying Body Of Some Kid. Stand By Me is actually based on “The Body” which was one of Steven King’s short stories in the book “Different Seasons.” Most of the short stories in the book have been made into great full length movies. Yet most of Steven King’s full length books have been made into short pieces of crap. He should accidentally lose most pages of his books – it might make for better adaptations.

The story is told from the memory of a writer about the time he and three other childhood friends travelled through the woods, racing against a local gang to see their first dead body. Apparently none of them have ever been to a funeral – including the main character whose brother died. Wouldn’t that have been the first dead body they had seen? The movie stars Wil “Wesley Crusher” Wheaton, River “Only Reason For Joaquin” Phoenix, Jerry “Romijn-Stamos” O’Connell and Corey “Drugs” Feldman as the tight-panted, barbershop quartet, mismatched group of friends. This was the time where you would be friends with anyone who lived close to you – or had a trampoline. I don’t remember any of my friends from 6^th grade, let alone their names. Who has this great of a memory? The details are very specific. I can barely tell you what happened last week let alone what happened 20 years ago.

The dead body they travelled to see was that of a missing kid named Ray Brower. He really should have been a white girl. They would have found him way quicker. He got hit by a train (sadly not the Coors Light Train) while picking blue berries and was tossed neatly under a pill of leaves. I don’t remember seeing any blue berries near those tracks. Maybe that’s what was smeared all over his gross face. What would have been way cooler is if they rolled the kid over and it was Jon Cusack, the dead brother! What a plot twist that would have been. And after finding the body they don’t even take it or get credit for it. That’s like being crowned homecoming king and not sleeping with the homecoming queen while three friends look on.

The reason they didn’t take the body is because there was an altercation between the kids and a local gang, The Cobras, led by Keifer Sutherland. To get The Cobras to not take the body, Wheaton pulls a gun on Sutherland. Okay. There really needs to be more of an epilogue than what’s given, because as soon as they got back into town he would have taken the beating of a lifetime. Sutherland was the quintessential badass in the 80s – he was the prototype Billy Zabka. At least Corey got to see Sutherland die in Lost Boys. Actually come to think of it – it wasn’t that train that killed Ray Brower it was Corey’s derailed career. Luckily it didn’t take Wheaton down with him.