The below review can be found at Mr ShowBiz
: In director Rob Reiner's adaptation of King's
seemingly autobiographical tale, four pubescent boys
share a transformative experience when they head off in
search of a corpse in the woods. Perhaps no
contemporary film has more effectively captured the
private social world of twelve-year-olds, in which friends
ridicule each other mercilessly but love each other without
hesitation. These young boys--sensitively played by Wil
Wheaton, Corey Feldman, Jerry O'Connell, and the
extraordinary River Phoenix--already carry a lot of
emotional baggage, but Reiner avoids crossing the line
into pure sap. --Carmel Dagan

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The below review can be found at: TV Gen:
STAND BY ME
Rob Reiner, 1986
Our rating: 3.5
From the moment we hear the Ben E. King-Mike
Stoller-Jerry Lieber hit "Stand By Me," we know
we're in for a nostalgia trip, but STAND BY ME is a
lot more than that. The picture is framed by the
reminiscences of a writer (Richard Dreyfuss). Hearing
about a friend's death, he recalls the summer of 1959,
when he and his 12-year-old friends spent their time
hanging around doing what boys do. Gordie (Wil
Wheaton) is the writer as a youth, and he's joined by
Chris (River Phoenix), a somewhat older kid who's
considered bad because of his family, Teddy (Corey
Feldman), an erratic boy whose father is in a mental
hospital, and pudgy Vern (Jerry O'Connell). Vern
hears his older brother (Casey Siemaszko) tell a pal
that his gang found the body of a missing boy while
they were out for a spin in a stolen car, and when he
repeats the story to his own pals, they set out to find
the body.

Directed by Rob Reiner from a semi-autobiographical
Stephen King story, STAND BY ME is a sentimental
film that works because of its unsentimental
moments--in particular, its sometimes embarassingly
honest portrayal of what interests boys and how they
talk about it. Reiner elicits some excellent
performances from his young cast (River Phoenix is a
standout) and Kiefer Sutherland is memorable as a
menacing teen hood.




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