When Chris mentioned The Wizard in a recent post, and I asked him what The Wizard was, he freaked out, and didn’t talk to me for a week. Well, not really, but he was pretty disgusted. I honestly had never heard of this movie. So one Amazon order later, it was on its way to our house.

For those of you who don’t know (and apparently, if you don’t know, you are some kind of degenerate non-person), The Wizard is a movie from 1989, starring Fred Savage (the kid from the Wonder Years), about a boy who is a Nintendo “wizard”. It’s basically a 90 minute commercial for the NES.

I’ll give you a quick plot run-down, while trying not to spoil the incredibly predictable storyline. A boy named Jimmy who has barely talked since his twin sister drowned in a river gets put in a mental institution because he keeps trying to walk to California. His older half-brother Corey (Fred Savage) decides to break him out and take him there. Once they’re on their way, their father and Corey’s older brother (Christian Slater!) decide to chase after them. Also, the mental kid’s step-dad hires some kind of creepy pedophile to find the boy first. Since this guy doesn’t get paid unless he catches the kid (and finishes molesting him), he is constantly trying to impede the progress of the father/son team. For the sake of the story, you have to ignore the fact that a 13 year old breaks into and out of a mental hospital, and also that even though they are walking down the highway, nobody in a car can catch up to them. Eventually the runaways figure out that they have no money (obviously), and meet a girl named Haley at a train station, where they discover that Jimmy is some kind of video game prodigy. So they team up and start making money by pitting Jimmy against strangers and placing bets. This leads to a montage of them beating people and winning money, until they come up against their nemesis… Lucas. He has a power glove. Obviously this means that he wins. So buy a power glove, it makes you better than everyone else! Somewhere in here they decide that they are going to enter into a video game contest in California, and start “training” Jimmy for it. They get one of Haley’s trucker friends (did I mention that her dad is a trucker?) to play craps for them, and win $400. Apparently in 1989 this was enough money to stay in a really fancy hotel room for days and play endless arcade games. I won’t tell you what happens when they get to the competition, in case you’re like me and have never heard of this movie. Okay, whatever, I’ll tell you. It’s not like it’s a big surprise anyways. Lucas and Jimmy face off in the finals (there is another girl there, but she is obviously not important. I think the casting call must have been something like “ugly dork girl wanted”). Lucas owns all 97 NES games, and Jimmy has been training like crazy on their apparently endless $400, but nobody could have expected what was coming… except everyone. Nintendo is unveiling Super Mario Bros 3 as the game for the Video Armageddon finals. Jimmy wins, with the constant and very helpful advice of a group of people who have never seen this game before in their lives.

I won’t list them all, and I doubt I even noticed half of them, but The Wizard was absolutely filled with errors. Some small, and forgivable, like the music from one game playing while showing screens from another (sound and video editing people can’t be expected to know every soundtrack of every game). Some, however, are pretty heinous, like announcing a two minute countdown, while showing a giant clock counting down from one minute. Also, last time I checked, unplugging an NES controller doesn’t shut off both the system and the TV. And, though not an error exactly, it drove me crazy how many times these kids flashed money around. Even though they got robbed for it. Twice.

While watching the movie, Chris and I were trying to decide who from The Wizard became the most famous. So here is my Wizard Star Countdown:

#5 -Fred Savage. Chris argued that Fred Savage was the most famous person from this movie, but I disagree. Since the Wonder Years, what has he really done? A failed sitcom? A guest spot on Law & Order? Fail. I loved the Wonder Years, though, so he makes the list. As an aside, Chris may claim that he looks like Fred Savage. He does not.

#4 – A tie! Between Beau Bridges and Beth Grant. Who is Beth Grant you ask? I didn’t know her name either, but I’d bet you’d recognize her. She plays cranky old ladies. Always. Lunch lady, Waitress, Landlady, Someone’s mom. In The Wizard, she was the owner of a diner.

#3 -Christian Slater. He’s not doing anything spectacular now, but I had a huge crush on him when he was in Heathers. So, since this is my list, that’s enough.

#2 – Toby McGuire, who is on-screen in this movie for about 2 seconds, with a mullet and a bright pink t-shirt, isn’t even credited. His stint as Spiderman, however, puts him a close second to…..

#1 – Jenny Lewis, who played Haley. Her acting career hasn’t been stellar, but she dated Jake Gyllenhal, which is enough to warrant the win, but on top of that, she sings back-up for The Postal Service. So, apparently, she stole my dream life.

Honourable mention goes to…. Luke Edwards, who played Jimmy, the wizard himself. His only role before the wizard was in an ABC Afterschool Special called Tattle: When to Tell on a Friend (I’m guessing when it involves stealing, or creepy uncles touching you, but what do I know). Since then, his only noteworthy accomplishment has been to become an Orlando Bloom clone. Seriously, look:

Maybe he’s planning some kind of Mr Ripley-esque identity theft. If so, good luck to him.

I don’t entirely agree with Julie’s list of famousness. Jenny Lewis? Really? Toby Maguire or Fred Savage would top my list. Christian Slater loses points for Alone in the Dark. Yeah, you lose points for working with Uwe Boll.

On another note, Julie = SPOILAR! Although, I think there’s a statute of limitations on revealing the ending of a movie that’s twenty years old. Twenty years…wow. I was a little bit reluctant to watch The Wizard because I thought it would fall victim to the rose coloured glasses of nostalgia. Surprisingly it holds up better than you would think. Sure it’s a generic film that’s basically a vehicle for pedaling Nintendos but it’s no worse than any kids movie that’s released nowadays. Maybe that’s a comment on the strength of The Wizard or the weakness of the children’s movie genre…probably the latter. If you remembering having your mind blown watching Jimmy play Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time (“Get the star!”) I’d say it’s worth the $10 to go back down memory lane with a leaner, cuter Fred Savage.

PS – The banner for this article looks roughly like what I imagine someone literally throwing up the decade “1980s” would look like.