The Wizard (1989) Movie Discussion

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I know I don't usually post anything on Saturdays but today I'm making an exception. After about five to ten years after hearing about it, I finally watched the 1989 movie, The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater, Beau Bridges, and Jenny Lewis, last night. And I wanna talk about it. As you can see, I added the word "discussion" to the title of this blog post because it's not a movie review. So let's get into it.

I had just turned 3 years old when The Wizard came out. So I wasn't old enough to see the movie. Yet, somehow, I still ended up missing it on VHS when I was growing up in the 90's, despite the fact that it had a home video re-release in 1997, when I was ten years old. Given how nobody I knew, not even the older kids I knew, ever talked about it, it's not surprising that I missed it.

This movie introduced Super Mario Bros. 3 to North American audiences as it had been released in Japan on October 23rd, 1988, but wouldn't be released here in North America until February 12th, 1990. Yet, it was highly anticipated considering how well Super Mario Bros. had sold in 1985 and how well Super Mario Bros. 2 had sold in 1988. I honestly think this movie contributed to the success of this game.

People weren't kidding when they said this was an advertisement for Nintendo. I mean it was cool seeing footage for games that I've never played like Rad Racer, Ninja Gaiden, and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game that came out for the NES. However, the movie is so much more than just an advertisement for Nintendo and the NES. It's about the quest of a young boy to say goodbye to his sister, who died sometime before the start of the movie. The cast does an incredible job. I haven't seen Christian Slater in very much, besides a cameo in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), but I really like him in this movie. The last time I saw Beau Bridges in anything was in the final two seasons of Stargate SG-1 from 2005 to 2007. Of course, I've seen Fred Savage in a few thing, but aside from Sam McMurray, who I know from The King of Queens (1998-2007), the rest of the cast is pretty unfamiliar to me. Which is great, because I didn't have any preconceived notions about them.

 Honestly, the scene where Jimmy is competing against Lucas and Mora at the Video Armageddon competition actually reminds me of the pop culture review game show series, Video & Arcade Top 10, which aired on YTV from 1991-2006, just because it does have that competition aspect to it, with three contestants having a certain amount of time to get as many points as possible. So that aspect of the movie was familiar to me, even though I'm not a huge gamer, nor was I old enough to compete in anything like that at the time The Wizard came out. Oh and the music in the movie was pretty great too, with only "Send Me an Angel" by Real Life being a song that was familiar to me.

I finally picked The Wizard up on DVD when I was at Ottawa Comiccon last weekend. It was pretty cheap and I couldn't pass up a chance to finally see this movie since I'd heard so much about it over the last decade. Honestly, this movie was not disappointing in any way. Given I'd only ever heard people talking about this movie online, and it was all fans of the movie talking about it, I was afraid it was overhyped and wouldn't even meet my expectations. Not that I had high expectations for the movie, but fans of a movie tend to talk about it like it can do no wrong, even if it's not that good of a movie. And that's what I was afraid was going to happen with this movie. Thankfully it didn't, and I will definitely be watching it again in the near future.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week with more blog posts. Also, we had technical difficulties on Thursday night, which is why there's no podcast episode for you to enjoy this week. Katie did get the problem fixed, so we're going to try to broadcast the episode on Thursday, September 19th, which is this coming Thursday night. But, I'll have plenty of blog posts for you during the week too. So until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.