The Wizard
(1989)
Picture:
C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: C-
Universal
expected Todd Holland’s The Wizard
to be a big surprise hit Holiday 1989 film, but it instead bombed, but it did
not cost that much to begin with, so what were they thinking? Fred Savage was still the child star of the
overrated and ever-bizarre The Wonder
Years and though he grew into a good young adult actor, why they thought he
would be the next Ron Howard is also baffling.
Best of all was one of the critic quotes thankfully missing form the DVD
case that states that it was a combination of Barry Levinson’s huge hit film Rain Man from the prior year and
Stallone’s first Rocky film. Did this mean one of the kids was autistic or
just good with boxing gloves? Was it a
Freudian slip against Stallone?
With that
absurd quote behind, Savage is one of three brothers, the older played by
Christian Slater and younger having emotional problems. Instead of being put in some kind of
institution (not Slater), he gets him to run away and head out for a video game
contest. A strange chase with cartoon
annoying adults, one of which is trying to kidnap the youngest brother, and
kids who are petulant & can’t act (the David Chisholm screenplay does not
help) runs out of steam far before the supposed climax.
Then,
with father Beau Bridges catching up “remarkably” at the last minute, they are
in a giant auditorium to battle playing the ultimate videogame for a giant
championship. Today, we would be
expecting something new, advanced and very violent up to PS3 and X-Box 360
standards which will become dated as this review does), but the challenging
game the final three players must play is……..
The
original Mario Brothers!
Ironically,
that game has more memory than anyone seems to have of this bomb. Even more amusing, the extremely unadvanced
graphics are blown up on giant low-definition analog televisions to make the
competition less exciting. What was once
just bad is now a hoot, especially as the climax gets more and more dated. Obviously, Universal was making an early
attempt to catch the videogame wave and this is still better than Doom starring The Rock, but so is just
about any other film with half a brain.
That too was a Universal release.
The studio was better off with The
Last Starfighter, which is now a cult film and one of the only ones
connected to a videogame anyone still talks about. The only wizard
anyone seems to want to see now is Harry Potter, so skip this time capsule
unless you need a few laughs. Video
gamers in particular will laugh the hardest.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft and the sometimes good color is
its saving feature, because detail is lame.
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no real surrounds, though this was a
Dolby analog theatrical release and the old A-type at that. This has not aged well technically either and
has no extras.
- Nicholas Sheffo
