A young student realizes that he urgently needs to find a "science project" in order to graduate. Since he's pretty handy with all things automotive and mechanical, he sneaks into an army depot where old equipment is stored and steals a dusty, disused object which looks like a motor. He will soon find out that he has stumbled upon a piece of alien technology...
The 1980's, an excellent decade for fantasy and science fiction ! Here we've got a comedic version aimed at a teen audience and it works very well, mainly thanks to a jolly, unpretentious plot, good effects, good casting and good acting. There's good fun to be had as an unremarkable high school in an unremarkable town becomes the centre of an ever greater distortion of the space-time continuum.
The viewer also gets to enjoy some satirical snipes - for instance at the American army, which invests billions in state-of-the-art weaponry and then stores the results in some dusty, rusty depot remembered only by God. (By the way, I may live on another continent, but the phenomenon is common here too.) The movie even contains fleeting moments of visual poetry, what with the corridors of a modern high school getting used by a beautiful Egyptian princess being carried around by attendants. In the best Egyptian tradition, she even throws her admirers a lotus flower, as a token of her benevolence or amorous intent...
On the other hand there are a certain number of missed opportunities : the story, for instance, could have used some additional twists and turns. (I for one would have loved to see the "science project" of the protagonist battle it out with the "science project" of some of his fellow students.)
Still, an enjoyable romp - and Shakespeare at his wittiest, compared to some of the current cr*p.
The 1980's, an excellent decade for fantasy and science fiction ! Here we've got a comedic version aimed at a teen audience and it works very well, mainly thanks to a jolly, unpretentious plot, good effects, good casting and good acting. There's good fun to be had as an unremarkable high school in an unremarkable town becomes the centre of an ever greater distortion of the space-time continuum.
The viewer also gets to enjoy some satirical snipes - for instance at the American army, which invests billions in state-of-the-art weaponry and then stores the results in some dusty, rusty depot remembered only by God. (By the way, I may live on another continent, but the phenomenon is common here too.) The movie even contains fleeting moments of visual poetry, what with the corridors of a modern high school getting used by a beautiful Egyptian princess being carried around by attendants. In the best Egyptian tradition, she even throws her admirers a lotus flower, as a token of her benevolence or amorous intent...
On the other hand there are a certain number of missed opportunities : the story, for instance, could have used some additional twists and turns. (I for one would have loved to see the "science project" of the protagonist battle it out with the "science project" of some of his fellow students.)
Still, an enjoyable romp - and Shakespeare at his wittiest, compared to some of the current cr*p.