Hop into BQ's time machine and travel back with me in time to the soothing, feel-good cinema of the 1980's.......
"Jaws" and "Star Wars", the ultimate feel-good behemoths of the 70's put a decisive end to the groundbreaking but bleakly existential films of the era, many of them crafted by a new generation of directors and writers.
No more films about doomed rebellious young heroes, raging futile battles against the evils and conspiracies of authority figures.....and dying in the process.
Audiences craved movies that left them laughing, cheering, applauding........and that meant seeing authority figures defeated, humiliated, mocked, jailed, punched, kicked, stripped of their powers, sometimes literally stripped naked.....and if necessary, killed.
Smelling box-office bucks in the wind, Hollywood filled the need with countless movies that featured dorky underdogs of every variety......ultimately crushing all powers-that-be who tormented them, everyone from schoolyard bullies to nefarious government operatives.
Hence.....the Triumph Of The Nerds.
Specifically, I'm talkin' Science Nerds......brilliant, brainy teens who turn the tables on the dreaded Military-Industrial complex, thwarting the race to fashion more apocalyptic weaponry.
First up, the still sharply funny video store mainstay Real Genius (1985)
This one offers up a delicious clash of titans...... science savant and University senior Chris Knight (Val Kilmer) who's like an 'Animal House' Oppenheimer tasked with creating a death-ray laser for Professor Hathaway (William Atherton).
Hathaway's instantly odious, a self-aggrandizing prick who revels in his celebrity as a PBS science show host. Even worse, he's promised Department of Defense top brass he'll deliver them his students' superlaser which they can shoot into space to remotely zap targets around the globe.
This film's script proves every bit as smart as Chris Knight and his endearing gang of awkward geniuses.....the always seething, imperious Hathaway barely tolerates Chris's non-stop withering Groucho Marx-like patter, threatening to flunk him until the laser's perfected. And when it finally works and the nerds discover its true purpose, they execute the sweetest, most scientifically spectacular payback upon Hathaway and his space laser.
Funny all the way through, and gifted with a young cast you can't help rooting for, 'Real Genius' remains one of the most entertaining 'Triumph Of The Nerds comedies, still a joyful, laser focused 4 star (****) winner.
But for anyone who might think a Triumph Of The Nerds movie can be easily slapped together, try suffering through the following year's The Manhattan Project (1986)
The template sounds more or less similar to 'Real Genius', but what a difference the script and direction make. Once again, our young rebel-rouser's a science whiz.....this time it's high school senior Paul Stephens (Christopher Collet) His widowed mom (Jill Eikenberry) is dating Dr. Mathewson (John Lithgow) top scientist at the nearby, high tech "MedAtomics" lab.
Mathewson and his MedAtomics bunch mess around with their own custom made high grade plutonium. neatly turned into green goo compacted into cannisters.. This doesn't sit well with Paul and his adorable but determined activist gal pal Jenny (a young Cynthia Nixon, over a decade away from "Sex And The City")......especially after he shows her the mutated 5-leaf clovers sprouting all around MedAtomics.
To teach Mathewson a lesson, smartest-kid-in-the-room Paul outwits MetAtomics heavy security to sneak into lab, steal himself a can' o plutonium goo and make his own do-it-yourself atomic bomb to present at a big national science fair.
Uh.....yeah, sure. Right.
If any of that above description sounds ludicrous, stupidly far-fetched and not for one moment believable on any level........bingo.
And the film carries even more heavy burdens besides the overall dumbness of its plot machinations. Unlike the witty, whip-smart, charming classmates of "Real Genius", Collet's Paul comes off like a smug, self-satisfied little douchebag, I know we're supposed to cheer him on, but he behaves like he's in on a joke that only he can get.
Lithgow' does his very best as always, but his character's problematic too.....alternately conflicted and wishy-washy, his emotions and agenda vary from scene to scene. Neither villain nor ally, his conversion from top-secret nuke-maker to champion of transparency is as senseless as everything else in the movie.
Paul, Mathewson and whole crowds of rabid FBI guys and security guards end up back in the lab, where Paul's little mini-nuke decides to start up its countdown to detonation. When (big surprise) the day is saved, everybody goes on their merry way.......without the FBI or military bothering to charge Paul with swiping plutonium, making a nuke and coming close to wiping out millions of people.......c'mon, it's not like the kid did anything really wrong, like cutting class or trying to buy beer with a fake license.......
Beyond moronic and blatantly pandering to its teen demographic, "The Manhattan Project" proved a bigger bomb than the one that almost goes boom in the climax. Zero stars (0)
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