Catchy title sequence, made up of a series of technical illustrations tracing the history of weaponry from the Stone Age to the Atomic one, and backed by Ella Fitzgerald doing "You Took Advantage of Me." This and the CIA war-room sequence after it give the movie a genuine satirical edge, to be blunted before the end (but not before the classroom vignette of a tape recorder on the front desk lecturing to an assembly of other tape recorders). There is more of a coherent plotline here than in most Eighties youth movies, having to do with covert government research on a fictitious campus called Pacific Tech, and there is a nice tolerance shown for the eccentricities of very bright people. Or anyway the horse-faced Gabe Jarret as a shyly precocious 15-year-old and Michelle Meyrink as a chatterbox in a Louise Brooks haircut are very easy to tolerate. On the other hand there is Val Kilmer, supposedly "one of the ten finest minds in the country," but only if the rest of the list comprises Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Steve Martin, and other friends and alumni of the University of Saturday Night Live. This character pushes eccentricity beyond tolerance and beyond belief. And the movie, not to separate itself too much from other youth movies, suggests through him that brainy people want to have as much fun as anyone else, and that their brains are chiefly useful for coming up with more creative forms of barbarism. With William Atherton; directed by Martha Coolidge. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd
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