The Lost Boys

The film loses courage (or imagination) and hews to the Spielberg school of climactic denouement, so that teen farce and special effects take over. By the time the thing has played out, that subtle scare/laugh mix is a thing of the past and you feel as though you just walked out of "Breaking Away" or Goonies. Ah well. Read full review

Midway through The Lost Boys there's a brief scene that suggests the magic and power it could have had. This scene suggests a fable of seductive evil-but nothing in the movie is ever half as evocative again. It's more lost than the Boys: a glossy fiasco with most of the real blood sucked out of it.

Schumacher's work in The Lost Boys consists of turning undertones into overtones--of taking the latent, the implied and the mysterious, and turning them into the loud and the obvious. He takes a story and turns it into a bunch of scenes, each of which contains its own payoff and none of which seems to draw on what has come before. And in these days of concept films, a story is a terrible thing to waste. [31 Jul 1987, p.D]

Director Joel Schumacher, whose pastel color schemes vitalized St. Elmo's Fire, gives this a sensual, at times even erotic, sheen. And a few subplot issues - single motherhood, runaway kids, midlife dating - hint that at least someone involved with this project intended to go after bigger game. [31 Jul 1987, p.4D]