The Great Family Film Poll: The Goonies

The Goonies: Mikey leads his chums on a cave-bound quest to find the treasure that will save their families. Photo / File

The Herald and Flicks.co.nz are on the hunt to discover New Zealand’s favourite family film. Take our poll and tell us which film deserves to be number one.

Steven Spielberg didn't direct The Goonies, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a more enduring distillation of the master film-maker's family-friendly cinematic identity. Spielberg came up with the story for the beloved 1985 adventure, and is credited as executive producer - his unmatched ability to give kids what they want can be felt in every frame of the film.

Indeed, The Goonies is childhood wish-fulfilment cinema of the highest order - even the most indoors-inclined children fantasise about going on an adventure with their pals to find pirate treasure. Add in some Rube Goldberg-esque contraptions, a few water slides and a little bit of pre-teen smooching, and there's not a kid in the world who didn't want in.

Future Lord of the Rings co-star Sean Astin leads one of the greatest-ever collection of child actors as Mikey, one of a group of young friends whose houses are all about to be demolished by an unscrupulous property developer. Upon discovering a lost pirate map in his attic, Mikey leads his chums on a cave-bound quest to find the treasure that will save their families. Doing so brings them into contact with all sorts of peril, some of it in the form of bumbling criminal family The Fratellis. One of whom sings opera.

I've always seen The Goonies as an Americanised Famous Five or Secret Seven story - it took the old fashioned, youth-empowering derring-do of Enid Blyton's classic adventures and infused it with some ceaselessly amusing yankee insolence. There was genuine power in hearing these kids say "shit".

Arriving as it did smack in the middle of the 1980s, The Goonies' status as enhanced Blyton helps it to function as a metaphor for New Zealand's transition away from English-centric pop culture towards a brasher, American-style form of family entertainment. It remains one of the greatest ever examples of the form, and family-friendly films are still trying in vain to replicate its unique alchemy.