The Wizard (1989)

Strong and Moving!

Instant Favorite.

Fresh and Exciting

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

As others have pointed out, this is basically a very long commercial for Nintendo. The difference between a very long commercial and this film is that this film's creators decided to surround the commercial with an uninteresting story.Because the movie has to juggle the need to promote Nintendo with the need to have a story that went beyond "promote Nintendo," the result feels forced and insincere with its emotional moments coupled with game scenes that never really take off because you don't really care about the characters involved in them. It's easy when you're a kid, especially back in 1989, to overlook the obvious flaws, but they're otherwise unavoidable.Almost none of the actors stood out to me with the exception of Will Seltzer, playing a villain who tries capturing Jimmy in order to bring him back to the institution from whence he came. His was the only character whose antics I was amused by.

Jimmy Woods (Luke Edwards) suffers from unspecified mental handicap and often wanders off to go to California. He lives with his mother Christine Bateman and stepfather. The stepfather institutionalizes him in a home. Corey (Fred Savage) and Nick (Christian Slater) live with their father Sam Woods (Beau Bridges). There is little that Sam can do without custody. Corey takes his half-brother Jimmy away from the home on a trip to California. Bateman hires Putnam (Will Seltzer) to track down Jimmy while Sam and Nick follow the boys on their own. While at a bus station, they meet Haley Brooks (Jenny Lewis) and discover that Jimmy is a real wizard at video games. Haley suggests entering him in a big video game contest in L.A.This is a fun little adventure for kids. Of course, it's insanely dangerous to promote hitchhiking for little kids and it's a thinly disguised commercial for Nintendo. Nevertheless, Lewis and Savage are cute together. The power glove sounded awesome. The B story has some fun comedy. Beau Bridges getting hooked on video games is funny. If not for 3 little kids hitchhiking around in what essentially is a commercial, I would be more fully behind this movie.

Oh, I miss those days when video games were limited to 64 colours, controllers only had two buttons and the latest titles were sixty quid a pop. Wait a minute... no I don't.Regardless, here we have a movie where three runaways including Wonder Years (never watched it) star Fred Savage, his dysfunctional little brother and some tagalong chick hotfoot it to California so the youngest of their number to compete in a Nintendo tournament. On the way, they play plenty of arcade games for 'practice' (e.g Product Placement) while dodging the unwelcome attentions of a hired private eye on route.Cue parents and kids bonding over Ninja Turtles, minors hitchhiking across the USA without barely ANYTHING GOING WRONG and false claims of sexual assault against a pre-teen girl somehow being justified so she and her friends can make a quick getaway from their pursuer... "HE TOUCHED MY BREAST" indeed. It's as thin as rice paper, as cheesy as a Camembert festival and as haphazardly put together as my failed Scalextric projects.Despite all this, I have a soft spot in my scaly old heart for road movies, and seeing all those ancient Nintendo games brings with it something of a warm nostalgic glow (Which is a bit odd, considering I was a Sega dude). Plus, the final Super Mario Bros 3 showdown at the contest is genuinely thrilling... even IF we all know who the victor will be (CLUE: Not the blonde jerk or the girl geek).One final question... What DID happen to the Power Glove? 5/10

There's a lot of things this movie is and isn't. It is a great trip down memory lane, a blast from the past, a reminder of all things late 80s and early 90s, and a shameless Nintendo promo. It isn't a work of art, a plausible scenario, or even a decent movie by its own standards.If you were born before 1994, this movie is pretty much a love letter to ye olden days when Nintendo was king of the living room and emotional strife was brewing in 9/10 American families. This has all the components of a story that could draw in kids at the time. Our story features Corey (Fred Savage) who steals away with his younger and emotionally disturbed brother Jimmy (Luke Edwards) to escape the mounting tension of their family that is falling apart around them. Along the way they encounter a feisty red-headed girl named Haley (Jenny Lewis) and discover that Jimmy has a natural talent for playing video games and beating anyone that he faces. Soon they devise a plan to escape to L.A. to compete in a video game contest for $50,000 and in doing so prove that Jimmmy isn't a lost cause and possibly saving their family in the process. However, they have to dodge the boys' father and older brother (played by Beau Bridges and Christan Slater), a kid bounty hunter, and beat the competition.Yeah, the plot is seemingly ridiculous, and it really is. At one point the kids resort to hustling money in arcades to pay for their cross country trip. Then they encounter the a 13 year old boy who lives by himself and only plays video games for sustenance (with the aid of the Power Glove) who plays the evil foil for the main characters. And finally, they go into a casino complete with preteen girls in full showgirl uniform selling concessions.As mentioned before, this is for people who were kids and remember the Nintendo Era in all its splendor. If you missed this gem growing up or don't care at all, you won't change your mind and should avoid this corny rose-tinted film at all costs. But if you want to inject some nostalgia into your eyes or haven't seen this since you were a kid, rent it off Amazon or track down a copy and have a laugh. We were dumb kids.