Goonies never say die

It’s the twenty-fifth anniversary of The Goonies this week.

I loved the film, as all children of the 1980s should, but I always had one big problem with it.

At the end of the film, when Mikey opens his marble bag to reveal the jewels that he has managed to retrieve from One-Eyed Willy’s cache, the assumption is instantly made that this small handful of possible-costume jewelry will be worth enough to cover the mortgages on a significant number of homes in the neighborhood.

In fact, Mikey’s father is so certain that his ten-year old son has somehow stumbled upon a hidden treasure of enormous wealth that he instantly tears up the bank documents that he was about to sign and tosses them in the air.  And all this happens before the pirate ship or any other evidence of his son’s fantastic tale even becomes visible. 

Even if Mikey’s father believed that they were real jewels (a stretch at best), how was he able to instantly appraise their value with such certainty?

This never felt right to me.

Of course, I was able to instantly recall the names of almost every character in the movie prior to writing this post and could probably provide you with a remarkable accurate, scene-by-scene narration of the story, so apparently this faulty ending did not do much to spoil my love for the movie.