Rating of
2.5/4
THE UNDERRATED KIDS MOVIE OF THE LATE 80's
Drive-In Massacre - wrote on 05/06/09
The year was 1989, a year before I was born (yes, I'm 19) and a children's film gets released known as The Wizard even though the movie is a bit older than I am, I still think this can be classified as one of the movies that represents my generation's childhood. I do remember watching it once in its entirety around the age of 8 or 9, needless to say, I didn't remember much about it. I remembered that there was a villain in the movie that used a PowerGlove and...that was pretty much it. I also remember that when I watched it, I didn't really like it or hate it, it was just kind of another movie. Cut to 10 years later in 2009: I noticed that the movie was going to be shown on HBO and I was able to re-watch it with new eyes....after seeing it again, I was more than pleasantly surprised.
IMDB.com gives the movie an average rating of 5.5/10 and the critics at Rottentomatoes.com give it a rating of 36 out of 100%. Internet comedians consistently poke fun at this movie – Hell! Both The Nostalgia Critic and The Angry Video Game Nerd went after it! - I understand the criticisms that “the movie is a huge advertisement for Nintendo”, and I also understand that children basically like anything that is targeted towards them, especially when it is, in fact, a giant advertisement... even when the movie is complete crap (case in point Space Jam, which, yes, I loved when I was a kid), but I think The Wizard is much more than that. It has this bright, happy, warm-hearted feeling that is unique only to successfully made children's films.
Like a lot of movies that are similar to it, The Wizard doesn't really dumb itself down for kids. Yes, it does have it's stupid moments, but at age 19, I was still able to enjoy it. It has more than competent dialogue and it has a decent and pretty original plot about two brothers, Corey and Jimmy Woods who are being separated due to their parents' divorce. Jimmy is mentally unstable and has had problems ever since his sister died at a young age. Eventually, Corey discovers that Jimmy has a natural talent for playing video games. The two journey to the Universal Studios to compete in a video game championship. Now, what's so bad about that?
It is not like I find the movie to be up there with Lawrence of Arabia, but it is much better than what people make it out to be. Sure, the "retro" aspect of seeing the NES and all of it's classic games, definitely factors into why there are fans of the film, but to me, it seemed much more serious and thought out than, oh say Jingle All the Way or Kazaam. Bottom line: People need to give the Wizard more credit. One can tell that the people who made this film were actually trying their hardest to make a good movie, unlike the films that were previously mentioned. Definitely a children's classic.
Fred Savage, Christian Slater and Beau Bridges all have very good performances, and although the characters, Jimmy Woods and the villain Lucas are both obnoxious and over-the-top, the film isn't intolerable. In fact I can definitely watch it again. It has numerous flaws, such as: the shameless advertising and a few embarrassingly stupid scenes, but it is not as bad as some people make it out to be. Now whenever I think of the 80's children film as a genre, this is the movie that comes to mind.
3/5
