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The Manhattan Project (Widescreen)

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$11.39 List: $14.98Save: $3.59 (24%)

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Description

    Everyone knows that teenagers are smarter than adults, and if given a chance the kids could save the world--if they don't blow it to bits first. The Manhattan Project tells of how 16-year-old Christopher Collet tries to alert his community to the dangers of nuclear energy. John Lithgow, a doctor in a pharmaceutical research plant wherein covert plutonium experiments are taking place, is the boy friend of Cowlet's mom Jill Eikenberry. While Lithgow is romantically occupied, Cowlet and his girl Cynthia Nixon steal the plutonium and construct their own atomic bomb. They do this, of course, as a warning to foolhardy grownups--none more foolhardy than the folks who put up good money to make this film. Manhattan Project was directed by longtime Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman, whose expert sense of comic timing obscures the thickheaded "message" of this picture. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Additional Information

  • DPCI: 246-01-7210
  • ASIN: B002ITAIAS
  • Catalog #: 11363403
  • Item can not be gift wrapped.

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An uneasy blend of precocious teen comedy, cautionary tale, and message movie, Marshall Brickman's directorial debut highlights some of the best and worst aspects of mainstream moviemaking in the '80s. Manhattan Project starts out a warm, winning human comedy on the aftermath of divorce, with mom Jill Eikenberry and new boyfriend John Lithgow exhibiting loads of awkward charm, and son Christopher Collet striking the right balance between perturbed and just plain annoying. When the ripped-from-the-headlines plot kicks in, however, the film forgets that it's supposed to be about real people and not trumped-up atomic agitprop -- it becomes a left-wing Red Dawn. (It doesn't help that the technology featured in the film would have seemed out of date in 1978.) It's clear that former comedy writer Brickman is out of his league when the film's would-be pulse-pounding finale is shot and edited so as to have all the tension and buildup of a Midwestern state fair. Obviously, Brickman and company intended for a WarGames-style fusion of suburban sitcom and Cold War thriller, but where that film was buoyed by a pair of animated teen performers -- Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy -- Manhattan Project has to make do with the capable-but-underused Cynthia Nixon and the sedate, opaque Collet. Best to shut this one off at the midway point. Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide