real genius [1985]

filmmaker martha coolidge made some damn fine cult classics in the mid 1980s, like Valley Girl [1983], which remains high in my personal pantheon, & this delightful teen raunch-com.  i haven't seen Real Genius in a long time so when i found it on TV last night i slowed my shit down to watch it.

i developed a cold last friday.  it hit me hard over the weekend.  last night i was feeling a bit more on the mend but i couldn't sleep.  i was up late.  & so was this movie.  i needed to reacquaint myself to coolidge's tale of teen geniuses slaving away to their professor to develop a laser for a weapons system sold to the u.s. military.  but between the toils of these geniuses & corporate profits our principals discover life, love & that grades ain't everything.

val kilmer is chris, a legendary intellect, & massive screwball.  gabe jarrett is mitch, a 15 year old prodigy admitted to the prestigious university to help chris develop that laser for william atherton's prof jerry hathaway.  oh, & there is the very fine actor michelle meyrink [who later gave up acting in favor of becoming a buddhist adept (i've written about her before, she is that special)] as jordan, self-described as '19, brilliant & hyperkinetic.'  she & mitch later hook up, as if you didn't already know.  leave aside their age difference.  it's a movie, & another time.

the casual critic might think that this is a val kilmer vehicle for he is bright & center of the action.  when a prof asks him, 'are you really chris?' intimating a mind so vast can't also be so juvenile, chris answers, 'i hope so.  i'm wearing his underwear.'  that is some sharp repartee.  & kilmer is charismatic & handsome.  the camera loves him.  but for me, you know what?  the camera loves jordan more.  she is something to behold.  graceful, geeky, pretty, hyper smart, & magnetic.  she is something we hardly ever see onscreen, at least at that time, the thinking person's sex symbol.  i don't mean to reduce michelle meyrink to the sum of her parts.  not at all.  nor make her just an image in my head.  rather, her jordan is a complicated person of deep feeling & meaning.  there is a scene when her & mitch do manage to make manifest their true feelings for each other.  gabe jarrett is a fine actor for this role.  but it is jordan who commands the space.  she is geeky, hyper intelligent & comely.  she is a real, flawed, complicated human being which is not easy when the genre you are working in is raunch-com. 

perhaps i'm making much of a muchness.  i do recall watching the wonderful TV film critics gene siskel & roger ebert comment on the same when they reviewed this picture.  i can't find their review.  perhaps it is buried somewhere online.  & maybe their review clued me on to meyrink's talent.  i don't remember.  i am going on about the character jordan because i think the actor who embodied her was immensely talented.  & i miss her presence, or her kind, in cinema today.

& perhaps it was the histamines at play within my system.  for the geniuses prevail.  hathaway's plan to sell their work to the military is thwarted.  i do wonder how these young fine minds managed to do such advanced work without advanced degrees?  surely they are doing post-doc research.  but chris is just worried about 'graduating.'  i'll leave that for another debate.  the laser destroys the evil professor's house.  chris, mitch, jordan et al.  filled it with jiffy pop-like popcorn.  so when the laser strikes the house it will also pop the corn.  it does, while the wonderfully sentimental [for me] song by Tears For Fears 'everybody want to rule the world' plays as the neighborhood children delight in the house of popping corn.  i was almost near tears myself.  something about that song that takes me back.  & there, our young geniuses who have thwarted an evil, mad, prolix, & insatiably greedy professor, dance in the golden light of an early california [the light!  where else could it be] evening, & i am almost back to being a teenage boy too.

[yep, the link below will take you to that final scene & song]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B1FMJdqqLiM