As many are discovering of late, the 80s were a very cool time. Weird, but cool. As the nostalgia for the era continues to steam along unimpeded, I came upon a film I hadn’t seen in years and one that I rather doubt will ever get a remake, though at this rate, anything is up for grabs. A college comedy at heart, it was filmed a year after the highly successful Revenge of the Nerds, again focusing on the science geeks but this time, empowering them from the start and straight up ditching the jocks. It’s Real Genius and it’s definitely one to watch, streaming on Netflix right now.
THE STORY: Fifteen-year-old Mitch Taylor (Gabriel Jarret) is a smart guy. So smart, he gets recruited right out of high school to join the prestigious physics department at Pacific Technical University, Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) seeing huge potential in the boy. Mitch is roomed with fellow genius Chris Knight (Val Kilmer), renowned in academia for his superior intelligence, and more recently his rather cavalier approach to his success (he wears alien antenna to job interviews).
The two are lead on a pet project of Hathaway’s, a new kind of laser that they don’t know (but Hathaway does) is actually funded by the CIA to be a new kind of weapon. They are under some pressure to get it finished under a strict deadline, but blinded by the science of it, don’t see the lethality of its potential. Meanwhile, Chris teaches Mitch to lighten up and have some fun, soon meeting fellow student and smarty in her own right, Jordan (Michelle Meyrink), a fast-talker who never sleeps and seems to have a crush on the new guy. She also can knit. Very fast.
WHY YOU NEED TO WATCH: For a short time in the early 80s, before he did Top Gun and Willow, and then became a household name in the 90s, Val Kilmer got his start in comedies, and you know what, was really good at it. His debut film was called Top Secret!, from the same crew who made Airplane! and he proved himself an actor with pitch perfect timing, deadly good looks, and a veritable endless supply of charm. Real Genius was his sophomore effort and he sticks to the laughs with a terrific turn as a laid-back college dude with more smarts than his professors. So what if he wears bunny slippers.
Writer Neal Israel‘s script is the best thing going with a steady stream of very funny asides and commentary with Kilmer delivering them with bullseye precision. You might even miss a few. He has a way of looking spastic but entirely under control.
The thing that pulls this together though is the relationship between Knight and Taylor, the mentor/apprentice bonding that in the wrong hands would surely keep this indifferent, but the two are always great fun to watch. There’s a couple of good moments where poor Mitch, feeling out of his league, finds the twisted road Chris walks upon a sort of sanctuary where being free of it all is most grounding. It’s the underlying message of the movie, and it’s pulled off well in a great little speech that makes you sort of what to let loose a little on your own.
Then there’s nemesis Kent, played by 80s goofy bad guy stalwart Robert Prescott, who is without a doubt, the very zenith of preppy snobbery incarnate, stupidly dueling pranks with Knight and paying for it every time. When Chris and Mitch convince Kent he’s hearing Jesus in his head (thanks to Kent’s braces and a bit of transistor trickery), it’s a well-earned laugh. And let’s not forget what happens to his car. There’s no parking in the dorm.
Its last act is of course absurd, with the boys able to get inside a well-guarded military base and climb aboard a top secret aircraft, but hey, it’s for fun and the payoff is spot on, with a literal houseful of popcorn. Seriously.
Director Martha Coolidge begins with a clever illustrative historical account of man’s ascension to violence before populating the film with a cast of anti-archetypes, having fun with the premise while engaging us with a truly interesting story. Like, there’s a guy (Jon Gries) living in the boy’s closet, or so it seems, and his story alone is worth a watch, the movie smartly giving him some purpose beyond the gag he so readily seems set up to be.
While its tech might seem a bit archaic in modern times, the playful attitude and free-for-all ending make this a real joy to sit through, especially for the genuinely unhinged performance of Kilmer. Not quite a parody and not quite a thriller, this comedy fits snuggly in a track it makes all its own, combing a fresh script and a slew of fun characters. Real Genius was released before movies like this became cynical and hostile, a simple, made-for-laughs flick that will tickle your science senses and keep happy most everything else. It’s what to watch.