Short Circuit (1986)

Right up until about 2 months ago, my local supermarket still had a DVD section, they've scrapped it now which sucks. Truly sucks. Because every weekend I would peruse that DVD section with a fine tooth comb looking for movies that jumped out at me as potential blog topics. I haven't found a substitute for it yet. CEX DVD's section is too large, and my other local supermarket doesn't have a "home media" section. There is a void in my life... But before somebody in Visual Merchandising shit all over one of the few remaining joys left in my life I spotted this dodgy little movie about a robot called Short Circuit. A movie I genuinely thought was like a late 2010's odd B-Movie until about 5 minutes ago, but no, this is movie just barely older than I am and a movie that gave rise to the infamous "Johnny 5" mnemonic that crops up every now and again when, for whatever random reason, sci-fi robots are in discussion. It apparently got a mixed reception on release but now retains something of a cult status, definitely a scenario we have encountered before here on the blog, and I've sort of kept it to one side on my watchlist for a bit now, waiting for when it felt like the right opportunity. Which is, right now. I'm... looking forward this...

After an opening credits sequence with some fire backing music, we are introduced to Nova Robotics and their "remote units" engaging, and absolutely obliterating various pieces of military hardware on the battlefield in a demonstration of their capabilities. However after the demonstration is cut abruptly short by an approaching thunder storm, it's during the storm that Robot Number 5 (voice: Tim Blaney) is struck by lighting, causing the generator it is sitting on to let off an incredible power serge. Although all appears fine at first, it is clear Number 5 is suffering with a serious malfunction and when it fails to re-appear during a following demonstration, instead getting accidentally swept away into rubbish disposal, Nova Robotics are alerted to the fact that Number 5 has gone walkabouts. Drafting in Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg), the creator of the robots, and his assistant Ben Jabituya (Fisher Stevens), Nova Robotics head, Dr. Howard Marner (Austin Pendleton) commands Military Captain, Captain Skroeder (G. W. Bailey) and his men go out and retrieve the robot. Skroeder's men manage to track the robot down pretty swiftly enough, but when an accident on the bridge sends Number 5 tumbling into the back of Stephanie Speck (Ally Sheedy)'s Snack Shack truck, Stephanie befriends Number 5 initially believing it to be an alien visitor... After botching the retrieval of Number 5, Dr. Marner sends Crosby and Ben into the wild to try and track it down, but Ben seems more interested in trying to pick up women! Meanwhile Number 5, after analysing and memorising his way through Stephanie's encyclopaedia collection and spending the whole night watching television, drastically increases his vocabulary and after an accident involving her dog, Stephanie discovers Number 5 is actually a robot after all and property of Nova Robotics, promptly making a phone call to them to report she has their property. But it's after the phone call when Stephanie tells it that it's going to be disassembled that Number 5 makes the connection between being disassembled and dying and it freaks out. Commandeering and hijacking Stephanie's truck with Stephanie just barely able to climb aboard before it speeds off. After tearing through town, catching the attention of Crosby and Ben as they do, Number 5 brings the truck to halt as it almost careers off a cliff and reveals to Stephanie that it doesn't want to go back to Nova Robotics as they'll disassemble it and that it isn't just a robot any more. It's alive! Immediately arriving on the scene though, Crosby and Ben begin the process of reconnecting to Number 5 but when they can't and with Stephanie's help, Number 5 demonstrates that he has become sentient. But before Crosby and Ben can even process what they are witnessing, Captain Skroeder and his entire army of men explode on to the scene, surrounding the area and opening fire on Number 5 causing it to react in self defence. But as the numbers begin to overwhelm it, Crosby fears Number 5 could get destroyed and intervenes, shutting down it's power and ensuring it's retrieved without being damaged. However on the journey back to the lab, Number 5 is able to reactivate itself and clandestinely carrying out repairs, it quickly seizes control of the truck and becoming aware of it's own tracking device, disposes of it, throwing Crosby, Ben and Nova Robotics completely off the trail, before making it's way back to Stephanie. Going directly against Dr. Marner's orders, Crosby and Ben decide to steal a van and leave the lab in search of Number 5, hoping to find it before Captain Skroeder blows it to pieces, as Number 5 and Stephanie's relationship starts to blossom over some disco dancing. However the following morning, Stephanie's jerk ex-boyfriend Frank (Brian McNamara) shows up, convinced Stephanie knows the location of Number 5 after she was doorstopped by reporters and made a news broadcast, and looking to claim the $25,000 reward Nova Robotics have issued for information in it's whereabouts. But fighting back, Number 5 is able to turn the tables on Frank and sends him packing with his tail between his legs and his shiny Pontiac car in several small pieces! However with their cover blown, Stephanie and Number 5 make a deal to meet with Crosby, and Crosby only, at the Black Lion Inn. As Stephanie negotiates access to Number 5 in the Diner, Number 5 has an encounter with the other 4 units, but is able to outsmart every one of them and deactivate them all, and just gets done with the last one when, back in the Diner, Captain Skroeder discovers Stephanie and Crosby talking and is just about to seize control of the situation when Number 5 bursts through the wall, loudly announcing it was a trap and facilitating it's and Stephanie's escape. After a brief car chase, Number 5 and Stephanie are able to get away pretty easily but grind to a halt when Stephanie's truck runs out of gas, seeing that Stephanie is upset, Number 5 returns to the Diner where Ben has just returned to fetch Crosby, and after hijacking the truck and commanding Crosby to drive, Number 5 takes Crosby back to where him and Stephanie broke down. Despite it taking most of the night, and after various challenges, Number 5 is finally able to convince Crosby that it is alive, ultimately by laughing at a joke... but the celebrations are short lived as Nova Robotics tracks them to their base camp and surrounds the area, ultimately wanting to destroy Number 5. Crosby at first tries to negotiate with Captain Skroeder but when his stalling tactics fail, Number 5 makes a run for it from the back of the truck but despite surviving the initial barrage of bullets he is blown to pieces by a shell from a helicopter gun. As Captain Skroeder and the rest of the Army whoop it all up, a heartbroken Stephanie and Crosby drive away in the truck discussing their future plans forlornly until a familiar voice sounds from the back and Number 5 appears from beneath some wreckage; revealing the robot they destroyed was actually a duplicate and the 3 rejoice making plans to hide away on a farm in Montana as Number 5 decides he would prefer the moniker Johnny 5 instead!

Phew! Man, that felt like a journey! But I mean like in a good way! Sorry if my plot rundown got a little bit convoluted but they certainly squeezed enough goings on into a 1 hour 30 run time! But this was a pretty decent movie though. An enjoyable family friendly sci-fi movie, that follows a very familiar blueprint, yes, but still manages to be enjoyable and entertaining enough in it's own right.

It is incredibly easy to get attached to Number 5. And I'm sure a whole bunch of planning, time and effort went into achieving that exact goal, but as you follow it's development throughout the movie and as it slowly becomes a more human character, you find your attachment to it building. In the same way E.T. accomplished the same thing years earlier. And Wall-E would go on to accomplish years later. I can see how this movie was a massive influence on Wall-E on that tangent but I'm not gonna dwell on that too much here. Tim Blaney also did an outstanding job with the voice, helping to characterise Number 5 and evoke empathy when he needed to: "Stephanieeeee!" he was really great and absolutely vital to personifying Number 5.

Acting wise as well though, Ally Sheedy as Stephanie did a great job of being the supporting cast member to Number 5, in the same way that Lea Thompson did as Beverly in Howard the Duck (which I watched last month). Considering that she didn't have a human character herself to bounce off I felt like she still managed to do a good job of portraying her developing relationship with Number 5 and how she helped develop it's portrayal as a more human character. She played a greater supporting role in this movie than was probably recognised at the time really, but if she had failed the whole thing would have fallen apart, but she didn't and it really helped to push the movie into more credible territory.

There is not alot here for me to criticise really. I do have a couple of niggles - I felt plot wise it did sort of meander around a bit and not really build on much beyond: Number 5 has escaped, we need to retrieve it. Stephanie and Crosby's relationship isn't really developed and feels a bit rushed by the end and alot of focus is on quirky skits with Number 5 doing silly human stuff. There could have been more depth, more development, but it didn't ruin the film for me, or make it less credible. It just pigeon holed it as quirky comedy rather than making it a more credible cult-eque kind of sci-fi. If they weren't wanting to take that angle then hey, fair enough. But I would have liked to have seen it develop things just a little bit more beyond what we actually got.

And aside from that it was very much a path-well trodden and very much a familiar blueprint for a family movie about a foreign entity becoming more human. But I don't really have much else to moan about beyond that. Some of the acting got a little bit hammy in spots, particularly with Captain Skroeder's character and Ben Jabituya's character was incredibly racially stereotypical (*post edit - since learned that it was a white actor cast in "brownface." That is not cool.), but the main leads did a decent enough job to balance it out a little bit, even if Newton Crosby got a bit vanilla in spots. I don't think any of the acting was necessarily bad though, it was very stereotypical 80's and of it's time, but not poorly acted.

Everything else was pretty spot on. Some really decent cinematography really helped to make the movie just enjoyable to watch, and the soundtrack went beyond just being competent and average to elevating the movie that little bit into being more enjoyable. But I am a geek for 80's electronic synth music to be honest, so maybe that was just me. The special effects used to portray Number 5 and the rest of the robots were outstanding for the time and done so well that were instantly believable. Also really liked the sinister synthesized voices. Very kitsch and very 80's but I really liked it.

It's my staple diet on this blog really, quirky sci-fi movies. It's what I enjoy watching and heck, half the reason I even started doing this project was because I wanted to start watching more old sci-fi movies. Older than this one. But I enjoyed this quite a lot. It got a lot of things right, and composed them just correctly enough that made for a really enjoyable, family friendly, fun movie. It wasn't anything particularly groundbreaking, it didn't change the way I felt about cinema after watching it, but if it's goal was to make an enjoyable, fun movie then it accomplished that goal. (*post edit - the aforementioned casting of a white actor in a black role diminishes things slightly for me, not going to lie, and I've applied retrospective attitudes to my watches before now, but I feel like it wasn't done in a fashion so as to be a parody, more so that it was an attempt to strike a different character dynamic. But I am not a fan, I do not agree with it and it wasn't any more right to do it then than it is now.) I could watch this again, 4 or 5 maybe times over and I think I'd still enjoy it all the same. Strong 3 out of 5.