Just Kids – why Stand by Me remains a com­ing-of-age classic

“I nev­er had any friends lat­er on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does any­one?” These words sig­nal the end of Stand by Me, Rob Reiner’s clas­sic 1986 film and one of the great­est com­ing-of-age sto­ries ever told. They pin­point in a sin­gle breath the pecu­liar state occu­pied by peo­ple as they’re grow­ing up, encom­pass­ing the onset of puber­ty, the move to the next stage of school and the fast approach­ing real­i­ties of adult­hood – par­tic­u­lar­ly death.

Stand by Me begins in the quaint rur­al town of Cas­tle Rock, Amer­i­cana per­son­i­fied. It’s the height of sum­mer and things couldn’t be more idyl­lic or peace­ful for the four best friends at the heart of the film. As the adult ver­sion of Gordie (Richard Drey­fuss) explains in his voiceover, ​“Every­thing was there and around us. We knew exact­ly who we were and exact­ly where we going.” Their child­hood may have been sta­ble, but these boys have hard­ly led a charmed life. Gordie (Wil Wheaton) is still com­ing to terms with a recent fam­i­ly tragedy, Teddy’s (Corey Feld­man) dad is men­tal­ly scarred from his ser­vice in World War Two, and Chris’ (Riv­er Phoenix) fam­i­ly are just bad news. But they are shield­ed from the full force of these trau­mas by virtue of their youth and naivety. They are still just kids.

When we join them, the friends are about to begin junior high, a new envi­ron­ment that forces them to acknowl­edge the real­i­ty of their lives. Before then, Chris could sur­vive with­in his semi-crim­i­nal fam­i­ly. He may have been pre-judged by oth­er kids and teach­ers, and marked out for fail­ure accord­ing­ly, but he could sur­vive. Yet as he pre­pares to begin at a new school his aspi­ra­tions to make more of him­self come into con­flict with his family’s pover­ty and the prej­u­dice against them. As he con­fess­es to Gordie in one of the film’s most touch­ing moments, he fears that he’s ​“nev­er going to get out of this town.”

Like­wise, Gordie and his par­ents have suf­fered the ham­mer blow of his broth­er Denny’s death, but it’s clear­ly some­thing none of them have processed ful­ly. In their brief appear­ances Gordie’s par­ents sleep­walk through their day, haunt­ed by grief. They keep Denny’s room untouched. Gordie him­self has dreams of becom­ing a writer, but he’s more des­per­ate to be liked than pur­sue that career. He either wants to please his dad, who want­ed him to play foot­ball like Den­ny, or stay in his friend­ship group, even if that means end­ing up in shop class. The film finds the boys at a cross­roads in their lives, where the safe­ty and sta­bil­i­ty of child­hood meet the unpre­dictable pos­si­bil­i­ties and real­i­ties of adult life.

This dual­i­ty is clear in every exchange between them. Half the time they’re grap­pling with the life-chang­ing ques­tions men­tioned above: ques­tions of life and death, whether your par­ents love you, what career you’re going to pur­sue. The rest of the time they talk what adult Gordie calls, ​“the kind of talk that seems impor­tant until you dis­cov­er girls”; argu­ing about whether Mighty Mouse could beat up Super­man or how great it would be to eat cher­ry-flavoured Pez for the rest of your life. That bizarre bal­ance is summed up most suc­cinct­ly in one exchange where Ted­dy asks the oth­er boys, ​“Have you been watch­ing the Mick­ey Mouse club late­ly? I think Annette’s tits are get­ting bigger.”

The boys’ com­ing-of-age is sym­bol­ised by the jour­ney they go on to find the dead body of Ray Brow­er. They escape the bound­aries of their safe, sta­ble lives in Cas­tle Rock and head into the wild, ready for a con­fronta­tion with death. Along the way their youth­ful igno­rance is hilar­i­ous­ly exposed. None of them bring any food for the two-day trek. They don’t check when the trains are com­ing and almost get flat­tened. It’s a mir­a­cle they make it home alive.

Two inci­dents in par­tic­u­lar are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of their tran­si­tion into adult­hood and the fears asso­ci­at­ed with it. First is their encounter with leech­es as they mess around in a swamp-like pool in the for­est. It’s all fun and games until some­one spots a leech on Vern’s neck (Jer­ry O’Connell) and the boys rush to safe­ty. They strip to their under­wear, dis­card­ing leech­es as they go, until only one remains… and it’s in Gordie’s pants. Star­ing down at pos­si­bly the most impor­tant thing in the world and the great­est source of anx­i­ety for a 12-year-old boy, Gordie pulls the leech loose to a trick­le of blood and prompt­ly faints.

Lat­er, the boys reach Ray Brow­er, only to be con­front­ed by Ace (Kiefer Suther­land) and his gang, a group of old­er teens intent on claim­ing the fame of find­ing the body for them­selves. They rep­re­sent the future for the boys, par­tic­u­lar­ly Chris, whose broth­er ​“Eye­ball” Cham­bers is part of the gang. They are the kind of no-good wasters Chris, Gordie, Ted­dy and Vern could end up becom­ing if things work out bad­ly for them.

In the pres­ence of the body, mor­tal­i­ty sud­den­ly becomes a major con­cern as Ace pulls a flick-knife and Gordie draws the gun that Chris stole from his dad. Ray Brow­er was a kid, just like them, and Gordie is deter­mined that in the end no one will take him. He’s not a prize to earn either group some brief local celebri­ty; he deserves respect and the chance to rest in peace. As Gordie knows from his brother’s death and their ear­li­er tri­als on the train tracks, it could just as eas­i­ly have been any of them.

When the boys return to Cas­tle Rock it’s clear noth­ing with ever be the same again. As an adult Gordie recalls, ​“We’d only been gone two days, but some­how the town seemed dif­fer­ent. Small­er.” Of course, it wasn’t the town that had changed, it was them. It hadn’t become small­er; their hori­zons had grown wider. They were no longer lim­it­ed to the safe con­fines of their town and the sim­ple child­hood they grew up with. Now they knew what the world had to offer, good and bad. They had come of age.