The Boonies

The Boonies is what happens when you throw a treasure hunt, a teen comedy, and a murder mystery into the same storyline and mix them up together thoroughly.

Pay close attention to the beginning. There are six main characters here and a few dozen minor ones. I ended up needing to rewind once or twice to make sure I caught everyone's names. While I did figure out who they all were eventually, the characters were introduced so quickly that I did have take notes about who was who until I got to know everyone. It would have been nice to have a little more time for an introduction in the beginning, although I did soon come to see why that info dump was necessary.

As fast as the pacing was in the beginning, it only sped up from there. This treasure hunt was serious business, and the characters didn't have much time to figure out all of the clues before time ran out. I liked the fact that they were working with such tight deadlines. It made the plot even more exciting than it already was, especially when I factored in the time needed to explore why the victim was dead and who might have killed him.

The twists and turns were a great deal of fun as well. All of the characters had grown up together and attended the same school for years, but that was the least important thing that tied them together. Figuring out the many other connections between them was a treat. I didn't see half of them coming in advance! This is one of the major reasons why I'm not referring to anyone by name in this review or talking about what their relationships were with the other students. Even simple details like those will give away too many clues about what happens later on, and this is definitely the sort of thing that should be watched without any hints in advance about what's going to happen.

There were mature themes in this film involving sex, relationships, and all of the funny ways bodies change when you're a teenager, so this is probably the best fit for a high school aged audience and older.

The Goonies meet without a paddle!! Can they not come up with anything ORIGINAL? Save yourself the trouble!!

"The Boonies". You would think it's a parody of "The Goonies". Partially it is. Here it's also about a hidden treasure (a briefcase with $ 1,164,000) which Doug (Calum Worthy) has hidden somewhere at "Boone High School". A kind of quest devised by him after he died in a terrible way. Killed by bullying fellow students? Or was it someone of his childhood friends? Primary school friends who dropped him like a rock because they became more popular, while Doug was given the status of "nerd". In any case, this smart, acne-plagued adolescent has come up with a clever plan. An assignment that is sent en masse to all students of "Boone High School". And of course to "The Boonies" who for once need to put aside their prejudices and disputes and jointly carry out tasks to get hold of the money.

To be honest, the treasure hunt is a side issue. "The Boonies" is about lost friendships and how the school community changes you as an individual. As 10-year-olds Doug, Teddy (Cody Ko), Chuck (Kyle Jones), Holly (Andi Matichak), Stephanie (Lauren Elizabeth) and Elektra (Amymarie Gaertner) were the best buddies. Inseparable friends who founded a club with the original sounding name (sarcastic intonation) "The Boonies". Now, after many years, they have grown apart and there is an atmosphere of resentment and envy hanging between them. Doug's wet dream is to bring "The Boonies" together once more and to revive the lost friendship.

The five friends are classic examples of the archetypes that are used over and over again when it's a High-School movie. Stephanie is the "b*tch" of the gang who has a big mouth and wears tight, white hotpants with matching cowboy boots. Such a high-class bimbo who hates everything and everyone. Holly is the brainiac whose cup size probably equals her IQ and whose dramatic outbursts seriously got on my nerves. Teddy is a popular, cool guy. Chuck is the stupid jock who walks around with a giant Stetson all the time. To my surprise, I noticed also that he has a beer belly. Of course, there's a Goth chick among them as well. And as I mentioned earlier, Doug is the nerd. A dead nerd.

I can be brief and concise about the acting. It felt amateurish and terribly forced at certain moments. But all in all, it was quite funny sometimes. Of course, these well-known American school types are portrayed in a terribly exaggerated way. And they were simply annoying at times. Especially Stephanie's constant bickering started to bore after a while. And Holly managed to demand the most attention, every time her bobbling boobs came into view. I have to admit I can't remember much of her dialogues. The gigantic crack of her cleavage, however, is burned into my retinas. So just expect a lot of flat and sexually charged humor. But in some bizarre way, I started to like Chuck's figure a lot. His immense stupidity and grotesque way of proving his masculinity did work on my laughing muscles. So for me, this Texan dumbnut was the most successful character.

"The Boonies" is not a high-quality movie. It was as if I was looking at an assignment made by final year students from the Faculty of Art. Or that I was watching a play performed by students at the annual school party. Especially when several actors were grouping together, it seemed rather artificial and everyone was looking a little awkward. Humor also fails in certain areas and appears to be terribly outdated. So if you enjoy watching an old-fashioned "food fight", you definitely should try this movie. And God, that school food looked disgusting. All in all, it's a movie I certainly wouldn't recommend to others. It has its charms and good moments. But the fact that 2017 is the release year on IMDb, already raises questions. Did they put this project on hold for years? Or was there some doubt about releasing this film? I have no idea.

I can't improve on the other reviews here. Basically, yes, dumb, full of cliches, but funny -- and who wasn't perpetually enchanted by both Andi Matichak and the insults constantly thrown her way (my favorite being "Hooters goes to Harvard").

But the obvious question when you see that this was a "TV Series", if you saw it, like me, as a movie, is WTF? How come I never heard of it and can find no record of it?

Well kids, it wasn't actually made as a TV series but as that strange thing with a brief moment of popularity, the "web series". It was made as 12 episodes, each 10 minutes long, for a "network" you've never of called go90.

go90 lived for 3 years from 2015 to 2018, owned by Verizon who apparently had the bizarre idea that people would choose their cellphone carrier based on the ability to watch a series of exclusive short episode video content on their phones. This bright idea cost VZW around $1B and produced pretty much nothing of note, not even many memories of its one-time existence. BUT in its brief life, it did contract for a few of these short episode series, the only one of which of any notability appears to be The Boonies. (The rest were mostly everyone's goto format when you have no money and no ideas -- reality TV nonsense. There is also _We Are CVNT5_ which is a mockumentary about EDM, contracted for go90 a year later in 2018.)

And that gets us to here. Remove the credits, join twelve short episodes together and, voila, instant movie :-)

This film is a parody on stories like the Goonies but years later when they're older. It's a comedy. Cody Ko is also hilarious.