Horst_In_Translation Review of Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me

Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me (2000 Video)

Add-on that offers surprisingly little insight

[4/10 · 14 September 2018]

"Walking the Tracks: The Summer of Stand by Me" is an American behind-the-scenes/making-of documentary from 2000 that is of course about the film mentioned in the title and the latter is even more than a decade older, so the interviews you see in here are basically with the adult versions of the child actors and they tell us some memories about the production of "Stand by Me". There are some well-known names of course. Even with River Phoenix tragically dead at that point already, you get Feldman, O'Connell and Will Wheaton, who is probably more known for playing himself on The Big bang Theory nowadays than anything else he's done. And of course there are older interviewees too, such as Stephen King and while I admire the man and think he has come up repeatedly with greatness, I was as disappointed by him here as I was by everybody else. What they tell us, offers hardly any insight. It's more about interpretations of particular scenes than anything else, stuff that you can do yourself also when watching the movie this is based on. And it feels from start to finish as nothing other than a Rob Reiner praising documentary. I mean it's fine and I am sure it is impressive what he got out of all these kids especially, but at some point it just gets a bit too much and cringeworthy as a consequence. This is most of the time the biggest problem when it comes to this kind of documentaries that they forget to deliver something essential really while applauding each other constantly. So for me this could have been considerably shorter than 37 minutes. I kinda liked it early on still, but it felt as if the longer it runs, the weaker and more forgettable it becomes. A bit of a pity really, I'm sure the movie deserves better. So watch it if you really love the movie and then you can probably deal with it, stomach it, maybe even like it if you are somewhat blind to the weaker parts as a consequence and they sure are there and not too rare. I must say as somebody who has not yet seen "Stand by Me", this one here really did not raise my interest. It is on my watchlist yes, but I won't move it upwards after seeing this one. Go for something else instead. And no Rob Reiner is not the one and only defining actor-director, sorry guys.