RCM: Real Genius

Revisiting Childhood Movies Part XXVI:

Real Genius

• Director:  Martha Coolidge
• Writer:  Neal Israel, Pat Proft, PJ Torokvei
• Producer:  Brian Grazer
• Stars:  Val Kilmer, William Atherton
• Studio:  TriStar
• Award Nominations:  none
• Length:  108 min
• Genre:  Comedy
• MPAA Rating:  PG
• Release Date:  9 August 1985
• Box Office Gross:  $12,952,019 mil  (#66 – 1985)
• My Rating:  ***
• My Rank:  #41 (year)
• Nighthawk Nominations:  none
• Nighthawk Notables:  Best Line Comedic  (“I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, ‘I drank what’?”)
• First Watched:  on television when it first came to cable
• Number of Times Watched as a Kid:  5 entirely, the ending at least 10

I’ve been building to this for a while.  I’ve mentioned this film numerous times in other RCM posts with the thought that I would eventually review it and it finally came.  But, and this is going to be a very elliptical way of starting a review of Real Genius, it came the long way.

We started our month of free Prime so that I could see all the Oscar eligible films, like I have done for the last few years, because there is literally no other way to see them.  They never get released on DVD so my local library can’t get them.  And, on one level, it’s hardly worth it.  The Academy just hasn’t really warmed up to Amazon’s films.  Yes, Cold War earned a surprising Director nom and Sound of Metal was nominated for Picture.  But Borat didn’t win Supporting Actress and notable Oscar snubs have hit Beautiful Boy (Supporting Actor), One Night in Miami (Picture, Director), A Hero (Foreign Film) and Being the Ricardos (Screenplay).  But I’m a completist with OCD so I do it anyway.  And this year, among their 14 submitted films (which earned just 4 Oscar noms compared with the 6 for Apple’s 8 films) was Val, the documentary about an actor that I never really thought of as a favorite but who keeps popping up in these reviews (Willow, Top Secret, plus Batman Forever in the Batman reviews).  And watching Val reminded me that I had not yet reviewed Real Genius, a film, which like Honey I Shrunk the Kids and Zero Effect, has a surprising quasi-personal connection.  See, in the months leading up to filming (in the spring of 1985), director Martha Coolidge interviewed dozens of Caltech students (in spite of not actually filming at Caltech) and in the spring of 1985, one of the sophomore students at Caltech was my brother John.

So, this film always had a personal connection.  I don’t remember if it had happened the first time I saw it, but early on, my brother was pointing things out (like a guy really did live in the steam tunnels underneath the campus).  That made this, not only a funny film, but a fun one to enjoy.  Personal connections really do make a difference.

As a Kid:  This was a film that, like Silver Streak, Willy Wonka and Flash Gordon, I often seemed to miss the beginning of, but, since the ending was so enjoyable (and ironic because, like William Atherton’s Jerry Hathaway, I hate the smell of popcorn), I always stuck around for it.

This film seemed like what college could be: pranks on each other while still learning, a feeling of comradery with the people living around you and the spark of romance, sometimes not in the direction you might be expecting.  Already, knowing who I was (of my many flaws, lack of self-awareness is not among them), I feared I might be Mitch, the geeky little dork who is off to college too young and can’t interact socially but hoped I was Chris Knight, the totally cool geek who is smart and funny.  And honestly, I think in some ways, I really am.  I wasn’t even a teenager yet but I loved the idea of getting a smart revenge on the bully, of falling for the cute geeky girl and the thought that you could be smart and funny.

As an Adult:  It’s interesting to have come back to this film this time through Val Kilmer because, not only does this film show what Top Secret had shown before it, which was that Kilmer had charisma in spades, but because, aside from Kilmer, the acting is really the weak link.  Director Martha Cooldige, while never a huge success in Hollywood, nevertheless directed an Oscar nominee that won her the Indie Spirit (Rambling Rose), cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond already had an Oscar before making this film and composer Thomas Newman has as many Oscar nominations as anyone in history without a win.  But, aside from Kilmer and a little bit for William Atherton (probably actually remembered more for Die Hard than this film), the acting is a bunch of people you never saw before or again.  They fill their roles nicely but some of the lines are awkwardly delivered and it’s not hard to see why it isn’t a bunch of Breakfast Club type actors.  Kilmer got all the great lines, probably not just because he was the key character but because he could best deliver them.  And while some of the lines were already funny to pre-teen me (“Was it a dream where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?”  “No.”  “Why am I the only one who has that dream?”) other lines I only realized later were funny like, of course, my choice up above as the best comedic line of 1985.

Aside from the acting, there is some awkwardness in the film.  The entire main plot revolves around a ludicrous idea (not the laser – but that they could break into the base and reroute the laser) and things happen awfully fast.  But this is a charming and funny film (I still, after over 30 years, move people back and forth and then break into cha-cha’ing) that understands college.  It understands how people get in over their heads but also how fun it is to bond with these people, the need to take a break.  The idea that someone would walk by while people with gas masks are outside someone’s dorm room door is true to life (several people witnessed me stealing a friend’s door off his dorm room and most of the floor was in on it when I reversed the peephole of someone on our floor so you can stand in the hallway and look in) or that someone would just break into screaming while studying for finals and rather than everyone reacting, someone would just take his chair.

And then, of course, there’s the end, the reason I would keep watching every time it would come on.  It was extraordinarily gratifying, of course, to have the antagonist get such a perfect comeuppance (even if Mythbusters proved it wasn’t possible) and then it ends with such a great song.  It’s still a rare thing actually – for such a hit song to end up in a film so quickly.  The single for “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” was released in March and the film was released in August and it sadly probably wouldn’t have mattered if it had been written for the film and Oscar eligible because this is the year the Oscars passed over an eligible song list with “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion)”, “Don’t You”, “Crazy for You”, “Invincible” and “A View to a Kill” and then gave the Oscar to “Say You, Say Me”.