Uh, yeah, this is just a cute little romantic comedy/coming of age/thermonuclear war drama/break in to the government heist thriller kind of thing. No, really, it's fine, for what it is. It's simplistic and silly and takes just a little bit too long getting started considering the proceedings. This came out in '83 and Ferris Bueller's Day Off came out in '86, and either somewhere in the interim Matthew Broderick learned a bit more about acting or my memory is white-washing how good he is in the latter film, because he is not great in this. Not terrible, for playing a teen, and maybe it's just that the very boiled-down script is not serving him anything to work with, but he is definitely not great. Ally Sheedy is barely given anything to do, and what she does do is incredibly annoying. Also, I laughed out loud and rewound this moment twice, because at one point early on in the film she and Broderick are looking through archival footage to find an image of the scientist who has created the machine that they are now playing the war game against (WOPR, yuck, movie, get a grip) and when they see footage of him Ferris goes, "WOW!" and Sheedy goes, "He's AMAZING looking!!"
Wait, what? No he's not. He looks like a spindly 'that guy' actor, like Bruce Dern and Basil Rathbone had a love child who mated with Michael Bay to produce this actor. He in no way looks amazing, and furthermore, I'm not entirely certain I even understand what that MEANS. Is that good? Is that bad? Arguably, Joseph Merrick was amazing looking. So is Jocelyn Wildenstein. And Tom Hiddleston, I think he's pretty amazing looking too. But that's a weird adjective to choose, but it doesn't immediately connote positive or negative things. It's just like, wow, it's the amazing Professor Falken! But amazing in what way, screenwriters Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, amazing in what way?!
Gripes with that one particularly strange and unnatural piece of dialogue aside, this movie clocks in at almost 2 hours which feels unnecessary for a movie about a teenager "hacker" (before that term was en vogue, apparently) starts a war game that ALMOST leads to a US-Soviet atomic war situation. Especially considering how pat the ending is. We probably didn't need the 5 minutes of Falken chasing the dumb kids around in a field because they think it's the police coming for them and they can't find a single damned place to hide because it's a FIELD, before he finally lands and they realize it's him. And we probably didn't need the prolonged close-up of Ferris's dad's corn-buttering technique, followed by the dialogue in which the mother informs her husband that the corn is raw because it's a better source of vitamins and he asks if they can take a pill and cook the corn. I'm not saying that little tangent wasn't kind of fun, but... it was not that fun.
Look at the baby Michael Madsen in the opening of the film!
UGH.
They use this shot about 4 times, any time something is happening with the computer game they cut back to this so that we know that the computer is working away! Business as usual!
UUUUUUUUUUGH.
This shot....
...was not necessary, movie.
Best actor in this film, after Dabney Coleman. (Not Sheedy, the dog.)
JUST LAND THE DAMN HELICOPTER ALREADY SO THE KIDS STOP RUNNING AROUND LIKE IDIOTS.
Okay, very cute movie. Now go to bed.
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