Real Genius (1985) TriStar/Comedy RT: 106 minutes Rated PG (sexual dialogue, language) Director: Martha Coolidge Screenplay: Neal Israel, Pat Proft and Peter Torokvei Music: Thomas Newman Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond Release date: August 7, 1985 (US) Cast: Val Kilmer, Gabe Jarret, Michelle Meyrink, William Atherton, Robert Prescott, Jonathan Gries, Patti D’Arbanville, Mark Kamiyama, Ed Lauter, Louis Giambalvo, Severn Darden, Deborah Foreman, John Shepherd Reid, Tom Swerdlow, Beau Billingslea, Joanne Baron, Paul Tulley, Sandy Martin, Dean Devlin, Yuji Okumoto, Stacy Peralta. Box Office: $12.9M (US)
Rating: *** ½
Teens, even super-smart ones, just want to have fun. It’s a fact of life. It doesn’t necessarily have to be food fights and peeping at half-naked girls in shower rooms either. The whiz kids in the riotous comedy Real Genius are guided by their brains instead of their libidos in their quest for a good time. They’d rather transform their dorm into an ice skating rink (with a special form of nitrogen) than trick some poor girl into getting naked. Let’s see the Porky’s gang top that!
I saw Real Genius at a preview screening where it was well received by the mainly teenage audience. I laughed out loud right along with them. It’s a legitimately funny movie. It’s intelligent too. I can’t attest to the scientific accuracy of any of it, but it works in the context of a silly summer movie aimed at the teen demographic.
Directed by Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl), Real Genius is essentially an 80s update of those live-action Disney comedies from the 70s starring Kurt Russell as college student Dexter Riley. He was always getting into a mess as a result of some scientific experiment gone wrong. Nobody in Real Genius becomes invisible or gains super-strength, but there is a human computer. Actually, there are several. They’re all part of the physics program at Pacific Tech where the action takes place. Their leader is super-genius Chris Knight (Kilmer, Top Secret!). He’s one of the top minds in the country, but you’d never know it based on his behavior and appearance. He’s irresponsible, disrespectful and a slob. He doesn’t take anything seriously. The only thing separating him from a Delta Tau Chi is his high IQ.
The primary antagonist of Real Genius is Professor Jerry Hathaway (Atherton, Die Hard 1 & 2), an arrogant jerk secretly working with the CIA in developing a powerful laser weapon capable of taking out a single target from outer space. He has his students do all the work while he appropriates the funds for his own personal use. Naturally, they don’t know they’re building a weapon. Their mentor conveniently leaves out that part.
One of the students working on the project is Mitch Taylor (Jarret, The Karate Kid Part III), a 15YO prodigy recruited by Hathaway for his brilliant ideas regarding laser beam technology. He rooms with Chris and is shocked to discover that the “legend” is a slacker who specializes in goofing off. He’s placed in charge of the project to the wrath of Kent (Prescott, Bachelor Party), the secondary antagonist. In layman’s terms, he’s a weasel. He proves this time and time again. It doesn’t take a genius, real or unreal, to guess that he’ll be a target of retribution along with Hathaway once our heroes learn they’ve been duped.
What’s truly great about Real Genius is that Coolidge allows her characters to be quirky individuals rather than a collective of cliched characters. It’s a well-known fact geniuses tend to be eccentric. They don’t fit neatly into the system or society because of their intellect. This definitely applies to people like Jordan (Meyrink, Revenge of the Nerds), the sole female in the group. I think the word for her is super-hyperactive. She talks non-stop and never sleeps. Her mind and body are constantly in motion. She’s so focused on what she’s explaining, it doesn’t dawn on her right away what Mitch is doing when she follows him into the bathroom. As peculiar as she is, she’s not the strangest person at PT. That would have to be Lazlo (Gries, Joysticks), the long-haired, bearded guy who regularly enters and exits the closet in Chris and Mitch’s room. He’s a real character this guy. His idiosyncrasies have idiosyncrasies. More importantly, he has a reason for being this way.
Kilmer was at the start of his career when he made Real Genius. It was his second movie and second time in the lead role. In it, he proved that he could successfully carry a movie if given good material to work with. He gets it in spades courtesy of a witty, intelligent script from Bachelor Party writers Neal Israel and Pat Proft working with Peter Torokvei (Back to School). Kilmer is such a gifted comic actor, I did a triple take when I heard the news he’d be playing Jim Morrison in Oliver Stone’s biopic The Doors five years later. Jarret is also good as Mitch, a smart but naïve teen taken in by Hathaway’s BS. Meyrink is awesome as Jordan. Atherton excels at playing rotten bastards like the EPA guy in Ghostbusters and the reporter in Die Hard 1 & 2. Professor Hathaway is right up there with those guys. He totally deserves what his students do to him. It’s too bad Bonnie Bedelia wasn’t on hand to punch him out as well.
ANYWAY, you can see that I’m a fan of Real Genius. It was refreshing to rewatch it this past week. It took me back to a time when comedies knew how to be funny, some of them even daring to be smart. Again, I don’t know how scientifically sound Real Genius is, but it doesn’t resort to stupidity which is a lot more than you can say about most post-Dumb and Dumber comedies. It’s a fun movie too. I know the whole finale where the students form and execute an elaborate plan to foil the bad guys is a total cliché, but Coolidge makes it work. Pretty much everything in Real Genius works. I truly hope nobody attempts a remake; I shudder to think how they’d go about it today. Look at what they did with that rancid Vacation reboot.
