Real Genius is a 1985 satirical comedy film starring Val Kilmer and Gabriel Jarret. The film is set on the campus of "Pacific Tech", a fictitious technical university in the US based on Caltech, although some elements of the plot and campus refer to events at Carnegie Mellon University[citation needed]. Chris Knight (Kilmer), is a genius in his senior year working on a chemical laser. He came to the university as a somber, assiduous student but mellowed over time after deciding that there is more to life than just work. Mitch Taylor (Jarret) is a new student on campus who is paired up with Knight to work on the laser. Mitch is much like Knight used to be, and has trouble settling in. Eventually, Knight teaches Mitch how to enjoy himself and live on campus without "burning out".
Plot
The military contracts Professor Jerry Hathaway (William Atherton) of Pacific Tech to construct a chemical laser weapon capable of eliminating individual human targets from space. To this end, Hathaway forms a research team composed of his students at the university who will design and perfect the device; they will believe that they are advancing the frontiers of physics, completely unaware that it will be used as a military weapon. When the Agency insists upon increasing the output power of the laser, Hathaway searches outside of the university for a fresh perspective and sets his sights on emerging prodigy Mitch Taylor. The Professor informs Mitch and his parents that Mitch has been accepted for the mid-winter term at Pacific Tech. Mitch will become the second youngest student ever accepted into the university; the youngest "cracked under pressure within 6 months." Upon arriving on campus, Mitch is assigned a dorm room with Chris Knight. Chris is in his senior year at Pacific Tech and already works on the laser project. Mitch meets the rest of the team, including graduate assistant Kent (Robert Prescott), who sees Mitch as a threat (particularly because the professor tells Kent that he will now be reporting directly to Mitch).
Meanwhile, it is revealed that Hathaway has purchased an enormous house near the university campus and is spending huge amounts of money to have it renovated and furnished. An Air Force officer suspects (correctly) that Hathaway is using project money to finance the improvements on his house while making his students do the work for free. The officer warns Hathaway that when funding for a project is cut (as the laser project will be if not completed by its assigned deadline), the government will perform an audit. This provides the additional pressure needed to get Hathaway to rush the project.
Back at the dorm, Mitch meets Jordan (Michelle Meyrink), a hyperkinetic student with whom he falls in love. He also encounters the mysterious Laslo Hollyfeld (Jon Gries) who appears and disappears via Chris' closet. After a stressful day of working, Mitch tells Chris that he is having trouble with the laser and thinks that they're going in the wrong direction. He comments that Chris is the only one who knows how to use the thing, which is frustrating because he's never around. Chris decides to make it up to Mitch and throws a party on campus. Kent discovers the party and informs Hathaway that his prize student is goofing off instead of working on the project. Mitch gets in trouble with Hathaway, who questions if it was the right decision to have accepted someone so young into the school. Mitch, upset, returns to the dorm and calls his parents in tears. He tells them that he dislikes the school and wants to come home. They tell him to stay strong and that his room has already been rented out.
Meanwhile Kent, eavesdropping on the conversation, records it and plays it back later during lunch in the cafeteria. Humiliated, Mitch returns to his room and begins to pack up his things. Chris tells Mitch to get even with Kent; he counsels, "It's a moral imperative!" Mitch, Chris, and their circle of eccentric friends disassemble Kent's car and reassemble it in his dorm room, pumping the hydraulic suspension to simulate it sleeping and snoring in his bed. Furious with his shenanigans and slacking off, Hathaway sends for Chris and tells him that regardless of his marks at the end of the semester, he is going to be flunked out of Pacific Tech. In a reversal of the first act, Chris, resigned to his fate, has a discussion with Mitch who convinces him that he can't leave and he must get even with Hathaway. This time Mitch advises Chris that "It's a moral imperative!"
Much to the Professor's surprise, Chris decides to regularly attend classes and continues to work on the laser project. He even takes Hathaway's final exam. Before the exam, Kent tampers with the laser by putting grease on the optics. Afterwards, during a routine test by Chris, the laser malfunctions and destroys itself. Angered, Chris heads to the dorm room kitchen where, after stumbling across some frozen nitrogen ice, he has an epiphany and solves the power problem that has been plaguing the project, by using frozen solid fuel (instead of gaseous fuel) for the laser's power source. The team tests Chris' improvements and fires a beam "hotter than the sun," which burns a path across town. It gives Hathaway the five megawatts he needs. Hathaway promises Chris a job at a research facility, much to the chagrin of Kent, who was also vying for the position. Mitch, Chris and the gang decide to go out for dinner to celebrate. However, during their celebrations, Laslo analyzes their new creation and deduces that the laser's only true purpose can be for use as a weapon. Returning to the school, they find that Hathaway has already taken the device, and Chris faults himself for not realizing the professor's plan sooner. After an inventive interrogation of Kent by modifying Kent's braces to operate as a radio-receiver, through which Mitch gives commands, identifying himself as Jesus (and advises him not to masturbate), the group finds out that the laser is going to be tested soon at an Air Force base nearby, mounted on a B-1 bomber as a weapons platform.
Chris and Mitch manage to sneak in and successfully crack the computer controlling the laser, to change its target coordinates from a test site with an apparent re-creation of John F. Kennedy's last motorcade in Dallas to Hathaway's house. They call the Dean (Severn Darden) and the local Congressman (Joe Dorsey) and inform them to visit the house to witness the weapon firing. Inside the home, the gang have placed a huge Jiffy Pop tin (popcorn having been established as a food that Hathaway intensely dislikes). Posing again as Jesus, Mitch has also directed Kent to the house. When the laser hits the house, it lights up a stained-glass window, further convincing Kent of the authenticity of "the Voice". Absorbing the laser energy, the massive volume of popcorn expands and causes serious structural damage to the house. At the same time, the changes they have made to the systems computer causes the laser to overheat and destroy itself. Popcorn floods out through the house's expanding seams and broken windows onto the grounds, pushing Kent along with it. Pulling Kent from the mountains of popcorn, the Pacific Tech heroes and neighborhood children frolic in the popcorn to the Tears for Fears hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" .
Just at sunset, as the credits begin, Dr. Hathaway drives up to and parks in front of his shattered house and stands disconsolately looking at it, then holds his handkerchief to his face against the smell of the popcorn as the dog he has chased away from the house throughout the film runs up to greet him.
Cast and characters
Production
To prepare for Real Genius, Martha Coolidge spent months researching laser technology, the policies of the CIA, and interviewed dozens of students at Caltech.[1] The screenplay was extensively rewritten, first by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel, later by Coolidge and Peter Torokvei.[2] Producer Brian Grazer remembers that when Val Kilmer came in to audition for the role of Chris Knight, he brought candy bars and performed tricks. Kilmer remembered it differently. "The character wasn't polite, so when I shook Grazer's hand and he said, 'Hi, I'm the producer,' I said, 'I'm sorry. You look like you're 12 years old. I like to work with men.'"[3]
To promote the film, the studio held what they billed as "the world's first computer press conference" with Coolidge and Grazer answering journalists' questions via computer terminals and relayed over the CompuServe computer network.[1]
The name "Pacific Tech" ("Pacific Institute of Technology") is a name used several times in films and television when directors/writers/producers wanted to depict a science-oriented university without using a real institution's name—that name was also used in The War of the Worlds and Galactica 1980.
Mythbusters
In Mythbusters episode 125, first cablecast on June 17, 2009, Kari Byron asked if Tory Belleci and Grant Imahara were "familiar with a little film called Real Genius?", to which Imahara replied "I've patterned my life after it."
In that episode they attempted to discover if the final scene in the film, the destruction of Dr. Hathaway's house, was actually possible with a laser popping popcorn. They used a ten-watt laser to pop a single kernel wrapped in aluminium foil, showing that popping corn was possible with a laser, but testing with a simulation of a house and popcorn popped through induction heating (since a sufficiently large laser was not available), determined that popcorn was unable to expand sufficiently to break glass, much less break open a door or move a house off its foundation, but would cease to expand and then simply char instead.
It was also specifically stated in the program that a five-megawatt laser still did not exist, even in military applications, and that the largest military laser they knew of was 100 kilowatts.
Soundtrack
- "You Took Advantage of Me" performed by Carmen McRae
- "The Tuff Do What?" performed by Tonio K
- "Summertime Girls" performed by Y&T
- "The Pleasure Seekers" performed by The System
- "The Walls Come Down" performed by The Call
- "I'm Falling" performed by Comsat Angels
- "One Night Love Affair" performed by Bryan Adams
- "All She Wants to Do Is Dance", performed by Don Henley
- "Number One" performed by Chaz Jankel
- "You're the Only Love" performed by Paul Hyde and the Payolas
- "Standing in Line" performed by The Textones
- "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" performed by Tears for Fears
Reaction
Real Genius was released on August 9, 1985 in 990 theaters grossing $2.5 million in its first weekend. It went on to make $12.9 million in North America.[4]
Critical reception
Real Genius received mixed to positive reviews and has a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote, "the film is best when it takes them seriously, though it does so only intermittently".[5] David Ansen wrote in his review for Newsweek magazine, "When it's good, the dormitory high jinks feel like the genuine release of teen-age tensions and cruelty. Too bad the story isn't as smart as the kids in it".[6] In her review for the Washington Post, Rita Kempley wrote, "Many of the scenes, already badly written, fail to fulfill their screwball potential ... But despite its enthusiastic young cast and its many good intentions, it doesn't quite succeed. I guess there's a leak in the think tank".[7] Chicago Sun Times film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half stars out of four, saying that it "contains many pleasures, but one of the best is its conviction that the American campus contains life as we know it".[8] In his review for the Globe and Mail, Salem Alaton wrote, "Producer Brian Grazer craved a feel-good picture, and she turned in the summer's best, and she didn't cheat to do it. There's heart in the kookiness. Real Genius has real people, real comedy and real fun".[9] Time magazine's Richard Schickel praised the film for being a "a smart, no-nonsense movie that may actually teach its prime audience a valuable lesson: the best retort to an intolerable situation is not necessarily a food fight. Better results, and more fun, come from rubbing a few brains briskly together".[10]
Trivia
- The solid xenon-halogen laser proposed and built by Chris in the latter half of the film was actually in scientific development at the time. Real Genius was later given a citation in an academic publication which detailed the scientific work (citation number 7 in the paper) [11]
- A similar concept to the aircraft mounted laser is in development today, the Boeing YAL-1.
- At the time of the film's release, the B-1 was not part of the U. S. Air Force arsenal, not gaining operational status until 1986, the B-1 program having been canceled during the Carter administration but later resumed by President Ronald Reagan.
Possible sequel
In 2007, Val Kilmer expressed an interest in making a sequel to Real Genius, but no shooting dates have been set.[12]
References
- ^ a b Attanasio, Paul (August 7, 1985). "The Road to Hollywood: Director Martha Coolidge's Long Trek to Real Genius". Washington Post.
- ^ Attanasio, Paul (August 7, 1985). "Fun With the Whiz Kids". Washington Post.
- ^ Ascher-Walsh, Rebecca (June 30, 1995). "Cool Hero: Val Kilmer". Entertainment Weekly. http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,297866,00.html. Retrieved 2009-09-02.
- ^ "Real Genius". Box Office Mojo. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=realgenius.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-30.
- ^ Maslin, Janet (August 7, 1985). "Real Genius". New York Times. http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=1&res=9A05E3DD1138F934A3575BC0A963948260&partner=Rotten%20Tomatoes. Retrieved 2009-03-30.
- ^ Ansen, David (August 26, 1985). "Hollywood's Silly Season". Newsweek.
- ^ Kempley, Rita (August 9, 1985). "Real Genius Reels, Falls". Washington Post.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (August 7, 1985). "Real Genius". Chicago Sun-Times. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19850807/REVIEWS/508070301/1023. Retrieved 2009-03-30.
- ^ Alaton, Salem (August 12, 1985). "This time the teen antics are funny Real Genius is a real gem". Globe and Mail.
- ^ Schickel, Richard (August 12, 1985). "Guess Who Flunked the IQ Test?". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1050506,00.html. Retrieved 2009-04-23.
- ^ M. J. Fajardo, V. A. Apkarian, Simulated Radiative Dissociation and Gain Measurements of Xe2Cl in Solid Xenon, Chemical Physics Letters, 134, 51 (1987). http://chem.ps.uci.edu/~aapkaria/manuscripts/14.pdf
- ^ ""Real Genius" - The Sequel". http://www.filmfodder.com/scifi/archives/2007/01/real_genius.shtml. Retrieved 2007-07-02.
External links
