Real Genius

Yesterday AMC was showing one of my personal guilty pleasures, Real Genius, and I ended up watching it all the way through. I have seen this movie multiple times, but not anytime in the last 8-10 years. It's a silly movie, and it didn't crack me up quite like it did when I was 12, but I still really enjoyed it. Real Genius, made in 1985 amongst the Porky's/Revenge of the Nerds wasteland, is a real unique gem of a comedy that I bet most people my age have never even heard of.

The film opens with Professor Hathaway (William Atherton) recruiting 15-year old prodigy Mitch to attend his prestigious college. The fictitious college is based on a Cal Tech or MIT and the bright but quiet Mitch finds himself surrounded by some of the brightest young minds in America. Mitch, as the new wonder boy on campus, is assigned a dorm room with the former number one, Chris Knight, played by Val Kilmer. Knight has cracked, essentially, and has decided that academia and its pressures take all the fun out of life and he has devoted his efforts to clever pranks and pursuing women. Mitch quickly becomes immersed in difficult, high-stress research and Chris sees a younger version of himself headed for a meltdown. Chris takes Mitch under his wing and tries to teach him about the balance of work and play, with an (slight) emphasis on play. Professor Hathaway has Mitch and Chris working as part of a team to build a laser for the government and he threatens Chris with expulsion if they can not meet the government deadline. This sends the duo into overdrive, and they finish the project only to discover their work is actually to be used as a devastating new weapon. Faced with a moral dilemma and a newly invigorated disgust for Hathaway, the gang devises a plan to disrupt the laser's trial run, thanks to some clever programming and a lot of popcorn.

What really makes the movie for me is Val Kilmer. In a role that I must imagine Ryan Reynolds based his Van Wilder character off of, Kilmer shines as a smooth and cocky king of the nerds. If you don't think Val Kilmer can be funny or that he can't act, give his comedies a chance. He has great comedic timing and there's something about his inflection that makes me laugh. Check out Kiss Kiss Bang Bang with Robert Downey Jr., another oddball comedy favorite of mine where he plays a gay detective, and I challenge you not to laugh.

The film was directed by Martha Coolidge and her sensitive, liberal style allows the characters to really develop into quirky, socially awkward people: the kind you find at real colleges. In an era where intelligence is belittled in favor of athleticism or being popular, movies typically paint the smart kids as losers or stereotyped sidekicks who can't really add anything to the plot. Real Genius instead celebrates this intelligence, painting the teenaged characters as normal (or as normal as teenagers can be) people with special gifts. Real Genius is real comedy, not the typical 'teen flick' string of one-liners about masturbation or bodily waste ingestion. The best parts of the film are found within it's clever, witty dialogue and surprisingly effective and humorous montages. When you watch Real Genius you're getting a good comedy with more depth and heart than you might expect.