Real Genius
Teenage geniuses deal with their abilities while developing a laser.
- Director: Martha Coolidge
- Genre:Comedy / Romance / Sci-Fi
- Runtime:106 minutes
Cast
Val Kilmer : Chris Knight
Gabriel Jarret : Mitch Taylor (as Gabe Jarret)
Michelle Meyrink: Jordan Cochran
William Atherton: Prof. Jerry Hathaway
Jon Gries : Lazlo Hollyfeld (as Jonathan Gries)
Official Site:-
The film begins with a video presentation of a space-based laser weapon that incinerates a man on the ground with pinpoint accuracy. The CIA has contracted with Professor Jerry Hathaway (Atherton) to develop this secret weapon with his team of brilliant students at the elite university Pacific Tech. When the Agency demands a more powerful laser, Hathaway recruits 15-year-old high-school science prodigy Mitch Taylor (Jarret) to study at Pacific Tech and help with the project.
When he arrives on campus, Mitch is assigned a dorm room with Chris Knight (Kilmer), a “senior slacker” who is supposed to be working on the laser project but prefers to party and goof off. Mitch also meets Jordan (Meyrink), a hyperkinetic female student with whom he falls in love, and the mysterious Lazlo Hollyfeld (Gries), who appears and disappears via Chris’ closet. The laser team’s current leader, Hathaway’s subservient graduate assistant Kent (Prescott), becomes hostile to Mitch when Hathaway puts Mitch in charge of the project.
In the next few scenes, Chris increasingly distracts Mitch from his work. After Hathaway scolds Mitch for joining Chris’s pool party, Kent records Mitch’s tearful telephone call to his mother and plays it over the cafeteria PA system at lunchtime. When Chris and Mitch retaliate by disassembling Kent’s car and reassembling it in his dorm room, Hathaway threatens to flunk Chris out of Pacific Tech, and Chris finally returns to his work. His efforts appear to be ruined when Kent sabotages the laser, but, in a fit of anger at the laser’s destruction, he has an epiphany that solves the project’s power problem. The beam of the redesigned laser is “hotter than the sun” and produces the required five megawatts of power. Hathaway forgives Chris completely. Read more
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