110 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc
The people who made it had half an idea. The film begins as a comedy about a teenage boy in Seattle who is caught up in the fascination of computers and video games; he has all this miracle-working technology and not a thought in the world about what to do with it. Matthew Broderick plays the role with great charm; the boy is like an American Antoine Doinel, and he's the life of the movie. But when this boy accidentally plugs into the Defense Department's war-games system and gets into what he thinks is just another video game--Global Thermonuclear War--the machines take over, especially a huge box of flashing light that sounds like an 18-wheel truck rumbling down the highway. There's also the noise of speechmakers--the director, John Badham, loses his easy touch, and the picture goes flooey. It's at its worst when John Wood is onscreen as a saintly computer scientist who's so brainy and bitter that he rolls his eyes from side to side and wears his hair in bangs. With Ally Sheedy, who has some nifty lines in the first part, and Dabney Coleman, Barry Corbin, and Eddie Deezen as Mr. Potato Head. From a script by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes. MGM/United Artists.
For a more extended discussion, see Pauline Kael's book Taking It All In.
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