He taunts Jimmy ruthlessly ("We wouldn't want you to.WHIZ on yourself.") and, despite having devoted his life to Nintendo games and thus presumably having no friends, a crowd of prepubescent disciples follow him at all times. Only this messiah has a Nintendo POWER GLOVE, buy yours today! Lucas complicates the story, creating a sordid love triangle between himself, Fred Savage and Haley. Still, they stick to their guns (or should I say, their Nintendo LIGHT GUNS, for use with Duck Hunt), even managing to outsmart the enigmatic Lucas, a rebellious young boy who apparently lives alone in the desert like Mohammed. Haley misleads Fred and Jimmy on many occasions, notably one scene where renegade truckers steal their entire video game pilgrimage budget and presumably, molest them. Along the way they meet Haley, who's totally hot if you're 12. Realizing that being in the custody of one or more of his parents will most certainly kill Jimmy (and that Jimmy has the superhuman ability to reach level 3 on Double Dragon), Fred Savage does the right thing and whisks his kid brother off to exploit his virtuosic video game playing ability for cash and prizes worth well over $130. He's caught between his divorced parents in a custody battle over his autistic, obsessive-compulsive, equinophobic, dyslexic, colorblind kid brother Jimmy. Fred Savage explodes onto the screen as a curly-haired dork with highly articulate eyebrows. Thus was born The Wizard.a shameless consumerist repackaging of The Who's Tommy, adjusted for a new audience and coming at you in full-on buddy film fashion. So instead, they made a movie about the entire Nintendo Entertainment System, thereby capturing all the feel-good nostalgia associated with its hundreds of titles, but without crippling handicaps such as an unfeasible plot or Jean-Claude VanDamme as Colonel William F. Somewhere along the line, someone realized that it's nigh impossible to make a good movie based on a video game. It will forever hold a special place in the hearts of many. But it is a special period piece, a reminder of a simpler time when our only worry in the world was passing math and knocking off goombas. THE WIZARD is not the greatest movie of all-time. Okay, it's not exactly Nietzsche, but it's not total fluff, either. And the villainous Lucas is an example of how we should treat our enemies: with dignity and by letting our actions speak louder than our words, as Jimmy does. Putnam, the cold-hearted family services worker trying to take Jimmy away, helps illustrate that families are what matter. Jimmy, the autistic video game prodigy, demonstrates that all of us, regardless of our limitations, possess marvelous gifts. Beyond that, THE WIZARD carries deeper meanings that children can pick up on. And the video game competition finale holds up surprisingly well even with the novelty of the Super Mario Bros. It has laughs (who could forget Haley's scream of "He touched my breast!" to ward off the hapless Putnam?) and emotion (Jimmy's reflections of his late sister are undeniably heartbreaking). The film is actually a sweet, harmless cross-country adventure. But nor is it the sort of mindless junk that stuffy critics would have us believe. Of course we're not eight or nine or ten anymore, and THE WIZARD, in hindsight, is not actually a cinematic masterpiece. Most eight- or nine- or ten-year-olds who caught THE WIZARD upon release would give it two big thumbs up, if not the Oscar for Best Picture of All-Time. The people who made this movie, whatever their intentions, did. Calli-forn-ya!") Sure the highlight was all the cool video game-related stuff, but video games were a big part of our lives, one that our parents just didn't understand. It's so bad" and Jimmy with "Calli-forn-ya. It gave us playground catchphrases (Lucas with "I love the Power Glove. The film combined very human storytelling with hardy laughs and wide-eyed exhilaration. a 90-minute Nintendo commercial wasn't exactly an awful thing!). Critics almost universally panned it as a 90-minute Nintendo commercial, but young viewers were enthralled. When we finally got mom and dad to take us to the theater or pick up the video, THE WIZARD was every bit as good as we'd hoped. Nintendo was cool) thought they'd died and gone to eight-bit heaven. NES geeks (of course they weren't geeks back then. It not only combined our two favorite entertainment vehicles - Nintendo and movies - but also provided a thrilling sneak preview of the year's most anticipated game, Super Mario Bros. For this set, born in the late '70s and early '80s, the excitement in the air was palpable when previews for the film appeared on TV. THE WIZARD is a sentimental favorite for anyone who raced home after school to turn on their gray and black Nintendo Entertainment Systems.
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