Gold Diggers: The Secret of Bear Mountain (PG)
IMDb; Rotten Tomatoes; Universal; Wikipedia
streaming sites: none that I know of

Caution: spoilers.

This came out in 1995, but I didn't see it until 2025. It's something I always kind of wanted to see, just because it stars Christina Ricci and Anna Chlumsky, but beyond that I didn't know much about it. Before I watched it, I originally thought I'd put my review under "family films", but then I saw that Wikipedia called it an adventure film, so I thought that's where I would put it. But once I actually watched it, I decided it's not much of an adventure. I could have put it under "period pieces", since it's set in 1980, but that fact is of no relevance to the story. In fact the only possible reason I could see for setting it then was so that Ricci's character could do a bit of narrating from the present, as an adult. (According to Wikipedia, the narration is by Jennifer Hale, though if you'd told me it was Ricci I would have believed you.) So ultimately, I filed it under "drama". The movie got middling reviews and lost money at the box office, but I liked it, at least a little bit.

Ricci plays a teenager named Beth Easton, who moves with her widowed mother, Kate, from Los Angeles to the rural Washington town of Wheaton. She soon meets a couple of girls named Tracy (Ashleigh Moore, whom I know from a couple other things) and Samantha (Jewel Staite), but they are of no great importance to the story. They basically just exist to let Beth know that another girl, a tomboy named Jody Salerno (Chlumsky), is no good. But Beth befriends Jody, anyway. Jody takes her on an adventure to Bear Mountain, to find a hidden stash of gold. She tells Beth the story of a miner named Molly Morgan, who she believes has been secretly living in the mountain ever since a cave-in, many years ago. Soon after Jody and Beth get inside the mountain, some rocks fall and trap Beth, so Jody must go for help. When rescuers come, Beth believes Jody has saved her life, while Kate believes Jody had nearly gotten her killed. (Both things are actually true.) So Kate forbids Beth to spend any more time with Jody. But some time later, she relents and takes Beth to visit Jody. But Jody isn't home, and they find that her mother, Lynette, had been beaten by her boyfriend, Ray. Beth is sure Ray has taken Jody to Bear Mountain to look for the gold, so she and her mother and Sheriff Matt Hollinger go to the mountain to look for them.

I'll stop there. I don't want to spoil any more, except to say there is a happy ending. The story was okay, but not as much fun as I'd been hoping. What makes the movie good (but not great) is the friendship between Beth and Jody. And I don't know what else to say.