just watch it!

Charming and brutal

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is probably the best of the three big "science" films that hit the theatres in the summer of 1985. Well shot, lots of production values, and just fairly epic in scope compared to the other two films ("My Science Project" and "Weird Science"). The film focuses on a real dilemma some students who major in the hard sciences find themselves before or during graduation. If their genius is recognized, then they might be hired or otherwise lured to work on research that may have consequences. There's wit, there's romance, there's intrigue, there's a kind of "legendary" status injected into the film in the form of a character who reminds me of many a former student burnout that hangs around the outskirts of the UC Berkeley campus. I remember the making of documentary for this movie, and being curious about all of the strange stuff they were doing to get the film accomplished. It made me want to see it, and when I did I was genuinely entertained. A recap, "My Science Project" was an adventure film. "Weird Science" was a comedy for teenage boys. "Real Genius" was truly a film about university science students with a moral and genuine humor. And I guess that's why I tend to remember this film over the other two. There were one or two other minor players in the student genre that year, but again this film had them beat.Well shot, well acted, good production values, if you need a nostalgia blast in the science student genre, give "Real Genius" a try.Enjoy.

Teenage geniuses (Val Kilmer and some other kid) deal with their abilities while developing a laser.The 1980s seemed to be dominated by John Hughes movies and John Cusack. This film does not have either one, though it does have Jon Gries if you need a little John in your movies. Not sure why you would, but maybe you do.What makes this film so great is the writing. The jokes are puns and clever twists, sort of the humor you might expect from the Marx Brothers or similar comedians. There are more than a few dirty jokes (the word "penis" comes up a lot), but even those tend to be rather clever.

Val Kilmer, Gabe Jarret, Michelle Meyrink, Jon Gries and William Atherton star in this 1985 sci-fi comedy. Kilmer (Top Gun) plays Chris, a smart college student who tries to have fun. He takes whiz kid, Mitch (Jarret) under his wing and they work together to design a laser for their professor, Hathaway (Atherton). Soon, Chris and Mitch complete their experiment and discover it's designed for the military. Since Hathaway tricked them, Chris and Mitch decide to teach him a lesson. Meyrink (Revenge of the Nerds) plays Jordan, a girl Mitch finds romance with and Gries (The Monster Squad) plays Lazlo, a computer genius who helps Chris and Mitch. I grew up watching this and always enjoyed it. Kilmer is great in it as well as Thomas Newman's score. I recommend this good 80's flick.

In the late 60's-early 70's I was a math and physics geek dreaming and working at getting a scholarship to Caltech, the real university fictionalized in the film. The Vietnam War and a draft lottery number of 5 intervened so I wound up joining the Navy and actually working on WMDs as I hunted the Great Steel Whales. I must have seen this film 50 times over the years and it's always funny and fresh each time.Contrary to the opinions of many, The plot IS based on the true story of a Caltech grad student who invented the X-ray laser for eye surgery; only to have Edward Teller of the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Labs try to turn it into a space-based particle beam weapon for Reagan's Star Wars project. Many of the incidents depicted are taken directly from the hijinks Caltech students engage in during the annual Ditch Day celebrations.I won't rehash the plot since so many have already done so on these pages. Suffice to say that a great, funny, literate script, journeyman direction by Martha Coolidge and believable performances by Jarret, Kilmer, Atherton, Meyrink, et all put this film a cut above virtually all the other 80's school and nerd comedies. The only reason I didn't give it a 10 was due to the somewhat cheesy special effects of the B1-B bomber used in the weapon's test.Ironically enough, I lived in Pasadena in the late 90's/early 00's and drove past Caltech every day on my way home from work. There I would periodically see busloads of Chinese tourists from the People's Republic taking each other's pictures in front of the Caltech administration building. I always wondered how many of THEM had seen this film and if seeing it would have changed their enthusiasm for the place.