Lil' Treasure Hunters (2004) and the Influence of The Goonies

Anyone interested in movies has a few that they grew up with.  The movies are a cherished part of their childhood.  They will always look fondly upon them.  Nostalgia may cloud their judgement, but the people grew up watching these movies repeatedly.  There is no taking away that lingering wistfulness that people keep for their childhood.  The movies that they watched remind them of their past.  They remind them of easier times, when the world wasn’t kicking them around like a soccer ball.

One staple of my childhood, as well as that of many other people, was The Goonies.  I adore the movie.  It is an action adventure movie for kids, about kids.  Movies like the Indiana Jones franchise were making it big in the 1980s, but they tended to be more adult in nature.  By that, I mean that the movies were made for adults, though they could cross over into child viewership.  The Goonies put that material on the level of children.  It was easier access and a good way to introduce children to those types of action adventure stories.

The basic story of The Goonies is fairly simple.  A group of kids went on an adventure to find treasure.  The treasure would give the children enough money to keep their homes and stay together as friends.  Along the way, they navigated booby traps and puzzles while avoiding criminals who were hot on their trail.  It’s not complicated, which makes it easier for children to enjoy.

Many of you might be thinking that The Goonies is not a bad movie.  Others of you will be thinking it is.  That doesn’t matter.  The Goonies is not the movie being covered for this week’s Sunday “Bad” Movies post.  But I needed to lay out this stuff about The Goonies before getting into my main topic.  That topic involves the influence that The Goonies has had on the movies since then.  I want to discuss the strange world of new millennium knock offs of The Goonies.  I’ve seen two recently as a part of his blog.

A month ago, I watched and wrote about Bark Ranger.  The story was heavily influenced by The Goonies.  If you remove the talking dog, Bark Ranger is about a kid and his girlfriend finding treasure so he can keep his home.  Along the way, the two kids solved puzzles to avoided booby traps.  They also outran a pair of criminals who were chasing them.  It was a newer version of The Goonies, but worse.

Let’s take a look at the first part.  The overall stories of the two are almost exactly the same.  In The Goonies, the homes were about to be foreclosed and the only way to stop it was for the families to get money.  The children discovered hidden treasure and headed out to find it.  If they could get that treasure, they would have the money to keep their homes.  Bark Ranger had the child’s family about to lose their home because the park in which his father works wasn’t making enough money to pay their mortgage.  The child learned about some hidden treasure and decided that getting the treasure would pay for their home.

What made the two movies even more similar was the bad guys.  The Goonies had The Fratellis (a mom and two sons) on the trail of the children, as they navigated through the booby traps and puzzles.  The two sons were the bumbling ones who fell into every trap as they attempted to catch those kids.  A similar pair of characters appeared in Bark Ranger.  Two thieving brothers stole a bunch of gold.  As the two children were searching for the treasure, they crossed paths with the brothers who then chased after them.  The brothers got caught in the booby traps while the children solved the puzzles and escaped without any harm.  In the end of both movies, the bad guys were arrested and the children found the treasure.

When I turned on Lil’ Treasure Hunters (also known as The Lil’ River Rats and the Adventure of the Lost Treasure), I felt like I was watching the same story once again.  There were kids.  There was treasure.  There was a home that needed to be paid for.  It was the same story beats repackaged in another kids’ movie.  It was essentially The Goonies.

The biggest difference between The Goonies and Lil’ Treasure Hunters was that the latter didn’t have the booby traps of the former.  The kids in Lil’ Treasure Hunters had a relatively safe voyage in search of treasure.  Sure, they come upon a waterfall and have to abandon ship, but that is much different than the set of elaborate traps that One Eyed Willy set up in The Goonies.  There was much less danger for these treasure hunters.

Much like the other two movies, Lil’ Treasure Hunters had villainous adults chasing the kids throughout the journey.  There was the woman who ran the local foster house, her assistant, and a man who was in town to find the treasure.  The three of them joined together in a group much like The Fratellis and tried to stop the kids from finding the treasure.  They bumbled around and caught up with the kids in time to have their secrets revealed before the police arrived and the kids got the treasure.

Do either of these movies hold up to The Goonies and what it has meant to children that have grown up since its release?  Some people might say so.  Some people don’t like The Goonies.  I, however, think The Goonies is one of the better children’s movies to come out in the past thirty-five years.  It brought wonder and adventure to children in an era where Indiana Jones was doing that for adults.  It inspired many movies that came after it.  The Goonies was quality wish fulfillment for children and there’s a reason that it has stood the test of time.

The two movies mentioned that were clearly inspired by The Goonies will not stand the test of time.  Lil’ Treasure Hunters is from 2003, and really, how many people have heard of it?  I’m sure that not many people who ever read this post will have heard of it.  The only reason I know about it is that it was in one of those 10 movie multipacks that I tend to buy for cheap at Walmart.  If it weren’t for me being a sucker for cheap movies, I would not know that this movie even exists.  The movie hasn’t left a lasting impact on cinema or children.

Bark Ranger, on the other hand, only came out last year.  It hasn’t had time to cultivate an audience.  Not that it will.  It was quickly moved from the main Walmart DVD rack to the back among the random movies.  I bought it because I wanted to feature it on the blog.  Were it not for that, I never would have gone near the movie.  Okay, I would have watched it based on the title, but I wouldn’t own it.  I can’t imagine it being a classic.

Why is there a group of movies made post-2000 that use elements from The Goonies?  Is it because that is a classic kids’ movie and they want to recapture the magic?  Are they simply trying to make some money by aping a movie from the 1980s?  The two that I’ve seen have not lived up to what The Goonies is.  They have not lived up to being good, entertaining movies.  I’m curious to see if there are others out there that fare better.  For now, these two are what I’ve seen and this niche is not a good one.

Now it’s time for a few notes:

• Lil’ Treasure Hunters was directed by Dan T. Hall.  He also directed Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery.
• Lil’ Treasure Hunters featured a few actors from Old No. 587: The Great Train Robbery.  They were Ran Burns, Alex Hall, and director Dan T. Hall.
• I mentioned Bark Ranger in this post.
• Have you seen Lil’ Treasure Hunters?  Have you seen any other movies made after 2000 that took their stories from The Goonies?  Have you seen The Goonies?  You can discuss anything related to this post in the comments section below.
• The comments are a good place to let me know about movies that might be fit into the Sunday “Bad” Movies.  Let me know your suggestions there or on Twitter.  They help me to schedule future weeks.
• Sometimes I like to put up clips of the bad movies I watch on snapchat.  If you want to see these clips, find me with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie is going to be The Stupids.  I’m not sure how good or bad the movie is as it somehow passed right by me in my childhood.  It’s a John Landis movie, so it can’t be all bad.  Anyway, I’ll see you next week for that one.

Mom and Dad Save the World (1992)

One of the leading sources of comedy in movies is dumb people.  This has been the case since the beginning of comedy.  A classic dynamic is the straight man and the wacky man.  In that scenario, the wacky guy is commonly a dumb guy.  Some movies push the boundaries further by making multiple characters into dumb characters and having that be the focus.  Dumb and Dumber, Idiocracy, and Mom and Dad Save the World use stupidity as their driving force.  There’s a fine line to follow in order to succeed with this comedy.  If you cross this line, you risk the movie being as dumb as the characters.

Mom and Dad Save the World crossed that line and kept on going.  It turned back, saw the line that it crossed, and said “Screw it.  I’m already this far.  I’ll go to the edge of existence.”  Why it chose to do that will is a mystery.  There were flying cars, killer mushrooms, and Jon Lovitz bald headed and sporting strange wigs.  A few good jokes made it in, but for the most part it was as dumb as the characters.  How anyone thought that this movie was good will forever baffle me.

What is Mom and Dad Save the World?  Dick (Jeffrey Jones) and Marge Nelson (Teri Garr) headed out on vacation.  They got magnetized to a distant planet by Tod Spengo (Jon Lovitz), who wanted to marry Marge before destroying Earth.  Spengo imprisoned Dick, leaving Dick no choice but to free himself and find a way to save his wife.  In saving Marge, he would also save Earth.  Oh, and Spengo’s planet, which he named Spengo, was filled with the dumbest inhabitants in the universe.

The main problem in Mom and Dad Save the World is that there is no proper straight man.  In Idiocracy, Luke Wilson is the normal person amidst the crazy, immature and unintelligent future generation.  Dumb and Dumber had the characters surrounding Harry and Lloyd reacting to the crazy antics.  The main characters of Mom and Dad Save the World don’t act in this reactionary way too often.  They have their own eccentricities that add to the lunacy.

Dick and Marge have been married with children for a long time.  They were introduced as that crazy old couple.  They showed their vacation pictures to anyone who would listen.  Dick always complained about his aging body, particularly his sore back.  He even got in his car to get the newspaper from the curb.  Marge found any opportunity to use her camera, regardless of how inappropriate it was to do so.  They weren’t as dumb as the people of planet Spengo.  They were, however, wacky in different ways.

There were sporadic moments that showcased a little bit of a straight man and wacky man contrast.  These were the best parts.  Also note that they did not feature Jon Lovitz.  One example was when Dick met the former king of Spengo, locked in the dungeon.  The king told him increasingly ridiculous things, including that Dick had to go into his pants.  Jeffrey Jones sold the reactions, showing that the dynamic worked.  There was a later scene in which Dick teamed up with a group of rebels and had to grow accustomed to their dumb ideas.  It was a fish out of water scenario much like Idiocracy, but without the writing talent of Mike Judge.

Mom and Dad Save the World instead relied upon farce.  There were only a few minor instances of farce that truly worked in the movie.  One such scene involved a group of Tod Spengo’s soldiers looking for the rebels and stumbling upon a grenade that would disintegrate them if they picked it up.  It had a message on its side that said “Pick me up.”  One by one, each of the soldiers picked up the grenade.  They watched as the soldiers before them died, and continued to do it.  More moments like this could have helped to make the movie funnier, which could have partially made up for what it lacked in story and straight man dynamics.

As big a problem as the lack of a straight man was the overabundance of Jon Lovitz.  He better suited for smaller, supporting roles than the loony bad guy in a science fiction farcical comedy.  His style is not something that can support feature length exposure.  His more tolerable performances are either shorter, or performances that lessen his style.  Movies like City Slickers 2 or Rat Race keep him Lovitz-y, but it’s a Lovitz-light.  Certain movies produced by Happy Madison have him at the same extreme as this movie, but he doesn’t get nearly as much screen time.  This movie had him at his worst.

There isn’t a whole lot more to say about the comedy in Mom and Dad Save the World.  The movie was a dud on that front.  However, there is one other thing that I want to bring up.  The look of the movie was interesting, though at the same time, very much of that era of science fiction.  It looked like many of the other movies from the early 1990s.  The set design was reminiscent of movies like Super Mario Bros. and Judge Dredd.  It had that kind of science fiction look, without any of the science fiction charm.  (Say what you will about Super Mario Bros.  The look was at least interesting, though inaccurate to the games.)  It looked like wacky science fiction for the sake of wacky science fiction.  It never truly built a world for anything other than jokes.  It could have used more than that.

This is going to end up being the shortest post I’ve written in a long time.  That’s because I don’t have a whole lot to say.  The comedy was bad, the visuals weren’t great, and the acting would fluctuate from good to bad in less than a second.  What saddens me more than anything is that this movie was the reason that Jon Lovitz left Saturday Night Live.  The production of this movie ran a couple weeks long and Lovitz had to choose between it and SNL, and left SNL to finish what he thought was going to be a huge movie.  It wasn’t huge and nearly ruined his career.  It failed because it was terrible.  It was terrible because of the comedy.  The comedy was terrible because it tried to be farce but didn’t go far enough, and didn’t have a straight man to save what was left.  Mom and Dad Save the World was a bad movie.

Now for some notes.  A lot of notes:

• Mom and Dad Save the World was suggested by @nickissac, who previously suggested D.E.B.S. and Drop Zone.
• Ed Gale made his fifth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance with Mom and Dad Save the World.  He was previously in Tiptoes, Chopper Chicks in Zombietown, Howard the Duck, and Santa, Jr.
• Debbie Lee Carrington made her third appearance after being in Tiptoes and Howard the Duck.
• Jeffrey Jones was in Howard the Duck as well as Mom and Dad Save the World.
• Mom and Dad Save the World is the second Sunday “Bad” Movie to feature John Michael Quinn.  He was already seen in Monster in the Closet.
• Thalmus Rasulala made a second appearance in Mom and Dad Save the World after being seen in Blacula.
• Danny Cooksey returned to the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Mom and Dad Save the World.  His first movie was Mac and Me.
• Michael Stoyanov was in both Mom and Dad Save the World and Freaked.
• Eric Idle is now in two Sunday “Bad” Movies.  His first appearance was in Delgo.
• If Wallace Shawn seemed familiar to you, it may be because he was already in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in Furry Vengeance.
• Two actors from Date Movie appeared in Mom and Dad Save the World.  They were Tony Cox and Charlie Dell.
• Finally, Jon Lovitz is in Mom and Dad Save the World.  He recently showed up in Bark Ranger.
• Have you seen Mom and Dad Save the World?  What did you think about it?  What do you think about this post?  Use the comments below to discuss anything related to this movie.
• If you have any movies that you think I should watch for the Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me now in the comments or on Twitter.  I need to start putting together the next part of the schedule.
• Sometimes when I’m watching bad movies, I will put up clips of them on snapchat.  You can find me there with the username jurassicgriffin.
• Next week’s movie will be something called Lil’ Treasure Hunters.  It is also known as The Lil’ River Rats and the Adventure of the Lost Treasure.  From what I’ve seen so far, it’s another new millennium knock off of The Goonies.  Why are these a thing?  I don’t know.  You’ll see what I have to write about it next week.  See you then.