This summer I took an on-line grad class called "Students and Teachers in Film," for which I wrote several movie reviews. The more I wrote the more I found my voice as a reviewer. I found I could play with reviewing formats and have fun. I'll post the best three here.

Note: the films were reviewed with a focus on how students and teachers were portrayed.

Review #1

Film Title: Real Genius
Star Rating (1-5): ***
Director: Martha Coolidge
Release Date: 1985

Staring a young Val Kilmer and directed by Martha Coolidge, Real Genius is a dry, witty, predictable, teenage comedy following the adventures of young math and science geniuses at an elite university.

The film follows its main character Mitch (Gabriel Jarrett), a fifteen-year-old freshman prodigy forced to share a thoroughly messy dorm room with senior Chris Knight (Kilmer). The pair battle with a jealous classmate, the pressures of their rigid academic lives, a scheming professor with sinister government ties, and their own awkwardness around girls.

Let me be clear: this film is terrible. The writing is flat, the characters one dimensional and static, and the plot trite and obvious. 80’s movie clichés are represented well: big hair, bad clothes, montages backed by popular music, evil government men in dark suits, and cheesy effects. While this would be enough to turn off most viewers, I think it gives the movie charm. Besides, it has enough wickedly witty, quick lines to keep my watching.

The movie relies heavily on stereotypes and static characters, though the actors do what they can with the script. The performances are, actually, believable and quite good, considering. All the characters fall into two categories: good and bad and from the start we know which is which. The students, save one jealous classmate, seek nothing more than an education and their “nerd” version of college shenanigans. This involves using their superior intelligence to turn their dorm into a temporary ice-rink and a powerful laser into a directional arrow leading to a raucous, girl-laden party. Everyone can understand their need to relax, the movie suggests, and even hi-strung geniuses need beer and girls sometimes.

Dr. Hathaway, the professor in charge of the laser research, played with perfect conceit by William Atherton, embodies the “bad”. He pushes the students without concern for anything but their laser research and conspires with other “bad” government men to use the laser as a military weapon. The naïve students fall prey to the evil machinations of these “bad” men and the ensuing battle consumes the last half of the movie. Thus the students are the heroes while the school personnel are the villains, another tired cliché seen in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, and other 80’s school movies. In fact, one scene at a class lecture demonstrates how little interest the teacher has in his students’ learning, and vice versa. This is scene is so far from any reality of school that we must laugh at the absurdity.

If one understands this before viewing, the lifeless writing can be enjoyed with quips such as, “I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates who said, ‘I drank what?’” Consider the exchanges between Chris and the other students and check your own laughter.

In the end, the students become their own best teachers, learning important life lessons about a balanced life and the value of friends. These heavy-handed themes nearly clobber the viewer in their opaqueness, yet that didn’t bother me. I laughed and happily cheered on the young geniuses because I’d already accepted this film as fantasy. I recommend it if you can do the same.