I admit watching Short Circuit twice during the 1980s. I saw it once with my recently deceased best friend from college — a wicked smart computer science grad student studying the stuff before 100% of you reading this owned a computer in your home. Then I saw it again on cable or VHS with a female friend who thought it was cute.
Didn’t like the first especially well although I enjoyed seeing my friend go apoplectic over stuff that didn’t exist in government and university labs at the time. We catcalled during War Games too except when Ally Sheedy was on the screen. Then I told him to be quiet or he would eat a circuit board because I was concentrating.
But today comes news of a Short Circuit remake to be distributed by Dimension.
Really?
Did we run out of crappy ’80s movies already?
Look, besides the original 1984 flick starring Ally Sheedy (oops, there she is again), I don’t get the progression of John Badham’s career. Consider: in three years he moved from directing the underrated Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars and Motor Kings, quickly moved from Richard Pryor to disco and directed Saturday Night Fever and then took on Olivier and Langella in Dracula.
So there was enough movie cred and enough Ally Sheedy to watch Short Circuit and sit through half the sequel. Besides Ally, El DeBarge kicked in a video and the film starring Steve Guttenberg with Police Academy foil G.W. Bailey staggered to a semi-respectable $40 million in U.S. box office.
After watch Ally, err, El prancing around the courtroom, what say you to a sequel?
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