Synopsis
Chris is the top brain who just wants to party, Mitch is the 15-year-old college wiz kid. Supposedly hard at work on a lab project with a mysterious deadline, they still find time to use their genius to discover new ways to have fun.
Your Movie Library
Cast
- Val KilmerChris Knight
- Gabriel JarretMitch Taylor
- Michelle MeyrinkJordan
- William AthertonProfessor Hathaway
- Robert PrescottKent
- Louis GiambalvoMajor Carnagle
- Jon GriesLazlo Hollyfeld
- Ed LauterCIA Man Decker
- Stacy PeraltaShuttle Pilot
- Daniel AdesLaser Ray Victim
Recommendations
- 91
The A.V. Club
Martha Coolidge's bright, whimsical Real Genius can credit part of its substantial and richly deserved cult following to the fact that nothing has changed: Raunchy, lowbrow teen comedies are forever in vogue, and SDI is still an impossible, money-sucking political mirage. - 90
Los Angeles Times
It's a brisk, smart satirical comedy from the writers of "Police Academy" and the director of "Valley Girl," set in a Caltech-like institution for the whiz kids of the sciences. How refreshing it is to see young people depicted as having a capacity for thought as well as emotion. - 88
Chicago Sun-Times
Real Genius contains many pleasures, but one of the best is its conviction that the American campus contains life as we know it. - 80
Washington Post
Fabulously acted and written with zing and zong, it's one of the few enjoyable movies of the summer. - 70
Variety
What lifts the production above the run-of-the-mill is swift direction by Martha Coolidge, who has a firm grasp over the manic material. - 60
The New York Times
What the film needs, instead of these familiar teen-movie trappings, is a cleverness and eccentricity to match that of its characters. For the most part, these are qualities that it lacks. - 60
Time Out
It's a change to see young folk are more obsessed with technology than the promptings of the trouser department, but the gizmo-heavy hi-jinks (fun with helium, frozen gas and other science-class materials) do outstay their welcome. - 60
Chicago Reader
The humor is relentlessly cruel, smug, and disconnected from any sense of how human beings might behave in similar situations. But though she's hardly able to dominate the project, director Martha Coolidge does manage to insert some of the sweetly eccentric characterization that distinguished her Valley Girl: one of the heroes, played by Gabe Jarret, is actually believable and sympathetic as a socially insecure adolescent, and a few of the minor figures are brought to life with deft, simple strokes. Though ultimately obnoxious, the film lingers in the mind for a few moments of genuine charm.
