Real Genius

One of the movies that I had an opportunity to record during a free preview weekend was Real Genius. It's going to be on again tomorrow (ie. early October 8) at 4:43 AM.

The movie starts off with a promotional video for an advanced laser system that can target an individual the same way that satellite imagery can capture individual houses. Except that this laser is even more precise, and has high enough power that it can kill an individual from the sky, while leaving somebody just a few feet away completely unaffected, which I would think violates the laws of physics, but that's another story.

Cut to a science fair. High school freshman Mitch Taylor (Gabe Jarret) is doing a project on lasers which seems fairly typical for that sort of 1980s science fair, but which is apparently extremely impressive. Impressive enough, in fact, that Prof. Hathaway (William Atherton) from Pacific Tech approached Mitch and his parents. Hathaway has apparently had his eye on Mitch for a while, knowing that Mitch is far more intelligent than just what this little science fair project shows. In fact, he offers Mitch a scholarship at Pacific Tech right now, with the chance to do scientific research on lasers.

This will also give Mitch the opportunity to study with Christopher Knight (not the Brady Bunch star but a fictional character played by a young Val Kilmer), a senior at Pacific Tech who, like Mitch, was also a prodigy, and somebody that Mitch looks up to because the writers assumed that child prodigies just know all the prodigies who come before them or something. (Actually, I was reminded of Angels Over Broadway and how everybody knew and fawned over the playwrights, which seemed similary unrealistic to me.) Mitch doesn't fit in with his high school classmates, so even though his parents may not be certain about sending him off to college, he jumps at the opportunity.

Mitch gets to Pacific Tech and finds... Chris has become a bit of a slacker. Chris is still doing work on the laser, but also wants to use science as a reason for people to have fun, rather than just being non-stop serious work. It's an attitude that pisses off Prof. Hathaway, because he's really using these students as a sort of research assistant doing unpaid (well, presumably paid by scholarship and whatever grants graduate assistants might have gotten) work on that laser system.

Mitch tries to fit in, and while there's one girl Jordan who takes a liking to him, a lot of the older students other than Chris are just as bad to him as his same-age classmates back in high school did. Chief among these is Kent (Robert Prescott), a brown-noser who is ticked that Chris and not he is managing the laser project.

And then, somewhere mysteriously in the bowels of the dormitory and showing up in Chris and Mitch's closet from time to time, is Lazlo (Jonathanb Gries). He was another prodigy, preceding even Chris, but he flipped out when he discovered what the work on the lasers was really being used for (and which should be obvious to any viewer from the opening scene). Eventually, Chris finds out too, just before the big experimental trial, which he, Mitch, and Jordan are going to have to try to stop.

Real Genius is another of those movies where you're going to have to do a lot of suspension of disbelief as you watch it. I didn't know anybody like this in either high school or college, and of course the trope of the military being evil geniuses with a conspiracy theory. I also have doubts as to how much if any of the science in the movie would work in real life. But beyond all that, there's a lot of fun for people like me who grew up in the 1980s, especially the soundtrack. And the story is also not overly serious despite the subject material.

For whatever reason, Real Genius is one of those movies that seems to have fallen through the cracks and is not as well remembered as other 1980s movies. That's a shame, because it's more than worth a watch. It did get a DVD release at one point, but that seems to be out of print. It is, however, currently available on Amazon Prime streaming.