Short Circuit
(1986)
Strange as it now may seem, and certainly few were talking
about it in hushed tones at the time, John Badham was one of the more reliable
directors of the 1980s. Blue Thunder,
War Games, Short Circuit, Stakeout and
into the first digit of the ‘90s with Bird
on a Wire, he made a string of successful but forgettable movies (War Games is actually pretty good,
though) that put the lie to the idea the talent behind Saturday Night Fever had a career ripe with potential ahead of him.
Badham made a career out of journeyman gigs, and you could imagine at least a
couple of his ‘80s features bearing a “Steven
Spielberg presents” production banner. Unfortunately, his sensibility
seemed better suited to the straight thriller than the action comedies that
became his bread and butter. Short
Circuit arrives in the Spielberg-initiated, post-E.T. and post-Gremlins (and
post-R2D2 if it comes to that) wave of cute creatures with whacky voices who
get up to all sorts of hi-jinks. It’s relatively harmless (with one notable
exception) and utterly pedestrian.
There’s so little effort on display, you wonder if Badham took
the job out of desperation. Bills to pay, American
Flyers had flopped (pre Kevin Costner’s big break). The premise – a robot made
for military operations is invested with consciousness and goes AWOL – could
work as merrily for a straight thriller as a kids’ comedy. With the right guiding
hand, and this might have been a lot of fun. Puppeteer Tim Blaney (who also
voiced Frank the Pug in Men in Black)
invests Johnny Five (not actually so-called until the final scene) with an
innocent goofiness that is quite endearing. At least at first.
The constant barrage of TV and movie mimicry becomes tiresome after a while, in a manner I’m sure a Joe Dante or John Landis would have avoided. They also might have infused the whole with a genuine air of zest and anarchy, seizing on the more corruptive elements and taking pot shots at its half-arsed moral position. It’s difficult not compare Number Five’s movie riffing with the TV-obsessed aliens in Dante’s Explorers from the previous year. And the idea of corporations weaponising innovations (or toys) is much more playfully and satirically handled in Dante’s Small Soldiers a decade later (Short Circuit is rigorously devoid of depth). Cute as Number Five is, with his demands for “Input” and thesaurus-like digressions on subject matter (when he breaks Stephanie Speck’s china he notes “Numerous fragments. Some large. Some small”), he also physically resembles a benign metallic version of Brundlefly from David Cronenberg’s The Fly remake (out the same year).
The constant barrage of TV and movie mimicry becomes tiresome after a while, in a manner I’m sure a Joe Dante or John Landis would have avoided. They also might have infused the whole with a genuine air of zest and anarchy, seizing on the more corruptive elements and taking pot shots at its half-arsed moral position. It’s difficult not compare Number Five’s movie riffing with the TV-obsessed aliens in Dante’s Explorers from the previous year. And the idea of corporations weaponising innovations (or toys) is much more playfully and satirically handled in Dante’s Small Soldiers a decade later (Short Circuit is rigorously devoid of depth). Cute as Number Five is, with his demands for “Input” and thesaurus-like digressions on subject matter (when he breaks Stephanie Speck’s china he notes “Numerous fragments. Some large. Some small”), he also physically resembles a benign metallic version of Brundlefly from David Cronenberg’s The Fly remake (out the same year).
No one is trying to convince us that Five or his company
have any real-world hardiness. I guess they do at least look like they’re period-accurate cartoonishly robotic, the laser
weaponry aside, but their precise function never really flies. Named SAINT (Strategic Artificially Intelligent Nuclear
Transport), they represent the “most
sophisticated robot on planet Earth”, adapted to parachute behind enemy
lines and take a 25 megaton bomb right up main street Moscow, thus “ensuring peace”. I’m sure there are some
parallels to drone technology to be had for whoever helms the remake (in
development for years now), and they’ll be a subtle as a brick, but its
difficult to believe a machine as conspicuous and clumsy as SAINT would pose
any serious capability of infiltrating enemy territory (the design comes
courtesy of Blade Runner’s Syd Mead).
Which, of course, is Soviet, this being the mid-‘80s.
Also, this being the ‘80s, the star (Johnny Five aside) is
Steve Guttenberg. His success and ubiquity during this decade still seem like
some kind of mystifying palsy that gripped the period and can be used in case
for why the period was so devoid of culture, class or anything to wax nostalgic
about (except, of course, plenty has been found, as with any era). I guess his
appeal was a certain naughty schoolboy cheekiness; certainly, that’s how he found
fame as Mahoney in the Police Academy
series (further evidence in the case of consigning the decade to the dustbin). Diner aside, you’d be hard-pressed to
find a decent Guttenberg movie, and he’s incapable of bring anything more than
lightweight frizz to any picture (The
Bedroom Window for example). Here he plays a shit-hot scientist and the designer
of Johnny Five, Newton Crosby. Newton wears polka dot shirts and would rather
tap out tunes on a Casio keyboard than hobnob with the big military types. He’s
a genius who is both witty, laidback and shy of girls. What are the odds?
This being the ‘80s, concerns of feeding the military death
machine take an understandable back seat to cashing a pay cheque (chucklesome
Steve tells us how “Originally I had
non-military purposes in mind. I designed it as a marital aid”, attempting
to break out those Mahoney cahonies) His principles only extend as far as the raising
of a fey objection; he certainly wouldn’t act on them. Newton also refuses to
believe in the possibility that Number Five is, indeed alive. Until his mind is
opened to the truth by hippy flake Stephanie (Ally Sheedy in a brief, post-Breakfast Club flirtation with standard
Hollywood romantic interest roles; here she’s third fiddle to Johnny and
Guttenberg – no wonder she didn’t keep playing the fame game).
The scene where Five analyses the constituent parts of a liquid Newton has pressed between the folds of a piece of paper, and then describes what it looks like to him, is a neat encapsulation of what the writers are getting at, but its played and staged with zero magic. Perhaps there’s some subtext here about the power of imagination and limits of scientific insight, but it’s all very one-note. Frankenstein’s Monster gets name-checked, and there may be a suggestion of a moral imperative not borne from divine law (asked who told Five it was wrong to kill, Johnny replies “I told me”), which may be the filmmakers wanting to have their cake and eat it (if they thought that much about it at all). It’s also unfortunate that Johnny seals the deal with regard to his humanity by laughing at a racist joke Newton tells (one might argue it’s okay for Steve to tell it as he’s Jewish, and if his character is Jewish then perhaps his robot is too).
The scene where Five analyses the constituent parts of a liquid Newton has pressed between the folds of a piece of paper, and then describes what it looks like to him, is a neat encapsulation of what the writers are getting at, but its played and staged with zero magic. Perhaps there’s some subtext here about the power of imagination and limits of scientific insight, but it’s all very one-note. Frankenstein’s Monster gets name-checked, and there may be a suggestion of a moral imperative not borne from divine law (asked who told Five it was wrong to kill, Johnny replies “I told me”), which may be the filmmakers wanting to have their cake and eat it (if they thought that much about it at all). It’s also unfortunate that Johnny seals the deal with regard to his humanity by laughing at a racist joke Newton tells (one might argue it’s okay for Steve to tell it as he’s Jewish, and if his character is Jewish then perhaps his robot is too).
Stephanie keeps a house full of stray animals (including a
skunk) and drives around in a Snack Shack van selling natural foods. This is
the level the movie is working at. Because she’s seen E.T. she thinks Five must be an alien (“I knew it. I knew they’d pick me”). She’s the ‘60s free spirit
reconstituted as a writer’s cliché (in fairness to scripters S.S. Wilson and
Brent Maddock, they hit almost all the right notes with Tremors a few years later, so maybe this was much wittier on the
page) but she still listens to atrocious movie tie-in songs at her place. The
actual generation, as typified by Austin Pendleton (always good nasal value)
are now sell-outs making big bucks. It’s just as well Newton has 40 acres he
can run off to live on, eh? Forsake the rat race for the dream of 20 years
before (minus the changing the world bit).
For all the ineffectuality of Short Circuit, there’s still an element that raises eyebrows.
Fisher Stevens plays Ben Jabituya, a comedy Indian the likes of which hadn’t
been seen since Peter Sellers starred in The
Party (well, maybe Spike Milligan went there on TV). This amounts to a hilarious accent and even more hilarious
mangling of phrases (“I am sick of
wearing the dress in this family”, “I
am standing here beside myself”, “Her
pants are blazing for you” and an inevitable “Oh my goodness gracious”). On top of that, Ben is something of a
PG-rated sex pest. I don’t think you can really use arguments along the lines
of “No one knew better” at this late stage. To compound this, with Sheedy and
Guttenberg passing on the sequel (if Steve said no, there must really have been issues with it) it was
left to Stevens to step up to leading human duties. Besides the political
incorrectness, there are other occasional inappropriate asides for the adults.
An elderly lady, seeing the advance of a military goons, admonishes her husband
“I hope you took the grass out of the
glove compartment”, while one has to assume the spirit of Saturn 3 is being invoked when, in reply
to a reporter asking if Five tried to molest Stephanie (just why would that be
an instant consideration?) she replies “No,
he’s not that kind of robot”.
Short Circuit is
also something of a Police Academy reunion (like it needed one), as G.W. Bailey
(Harris) shows up as the belligerent bad guy. His presence compounds the idea
that this has the pungent whiff of a quickie TV-movie, made in a weekend with
locations from every other episode of The
A-Team. The staging is clumsy throughout, and David Shire’s score is so of
its time it hurts. There’s a “that’ll do” quality to the effects too, including
Five imitating a grasshopper. Badham was no doubt limited by the lack of
versatility of his star(s), but he could have summoned some inventiveness
surely? It’s rubbing salt in one’s own wounded creativity that Johnny and
Stephanie dance to a clip form Saturday
Night Fever; Badham’s been reduced to pre-formed studio product. There are
also numerous Three Stooges
references, so I’m sure this is high on Mel Gibson’s list of favourite movies.
There’s no
reason not to remake Short Circuit
(other than Wall E having already
aped the design and adorability). It’s a fairly crummy movie, but one with an
easily identifiable selling point. However, the idea of a boy from a broken
home making friends with Johnny Five stinks to high heaven. The director of Alvin and the Chipmunks is attached. By the
sound of it, Short Circuit Re-Fused will
be lucky to approach even the mediocre quality of the original.