Short Circuit (1986)

 

Hot diggity damn, this is one pure slab of 80s nostalgia and then some! Heck, if you've seen this film as a kid, you will udoubtedly remember it very fondly and Johnny 5 is one of those iconic robots that helped shape your childhood. 

If not, that's fine too. 

Also: if the creators of 'Wall-E' didn't have Johnny 5 in mind when they designed Wall-E himself, then I am sure there is something wrong with the universe, as there is no way the similarities are accidental.

Somewhere in Oregon, there is a major robotics company who are now on the verge of developing something new for the military. They are robots that are almost autonomous and according to the creators highly efficient in tackling dangerous missions, so less soldiers need to be involved or possibly lost. 

Of course the true inventor hates this idea, but when someone pays the checks, right? 

After the demonstration, one of the robots gets struck by lightning and starts to behave rather weirdly. He escapes the facility more through luck than anything else and eventually ends up with Stephanie Speck, a young woman with a penchant for taking in stray animals. Number 5 starts to rapidly learn and eventually comes to the realisation that he is actually alive. 

Now of course, the company wants their product back, so they send in their security team to either capture or destroy the robot. Meanwhile, Stephanie is trying to keep Number 5 safe, occasionally helped by his inventor Newton Crosby and his sidekick Ben Jabituya. 

What on earth will happen? 

This is one of those films that has that 80s stamp on it all the way. Heck, you can easily slip this in the row together with films like for example 'The Goonies', even if the latter is a superior film to this one. Yes, I hate to say it, but time hasn't been too kind to this one and it feels pretty dated at times. The acting is okay, but you can tell that Steve Guttenberg and GW Bailey are better at accepting a goofy premisse than others. Ally Sheedy was a staple in these kinds of films, but she isn't good, not really. She's either a bit annoying or a bit too enthusiastic to make sense. 

Also: the asswipe ex-boyfriend was pretty pointless. 

Fisher Stevens was cast as the bumbling Indian sidekick to Guttenberg and while he might be funny for kids, for adults, he's pretty insufferable. I'm not talking about lumping a lot of clichés about Indian people together (luckily, they only make him speak in an exaggerated accent and didn't give him a turban), but his shtick is that he constantly says expressions wrong. It's sort of funny the first three times, but the next 200? Not so much. 

I will say this: the puppetry and animatronics for Johnny 5 are still gorgeous. There is some obvious wire-work here and there and some of the hand movements are a bit iffy, but overall, he still looks great. It isn't easy to give a robot an expressive face, but here they work with zooming eyes and very flexible 'eyebrows' of sorts and it does the trick. Also, his voice is a bit silly, but it shouldn't bother you that much, as it isn't grating. 

Leave that to Fisher Stevens this time around. 

So yes, for nostalgia's sake, this can be a fun time, revisiting some childhood memories. But on the whole, it didn't age well, I'm afraid. Watch it for Johnny 5 and Guttenberg's charisma.