The Wizard

The Wizard is a 1980s ~~movie~~ cinematic commercial for Nintendo starring Fred "Wonder Years" Savage (at an age when he didn't know any better) along with Christian Slater (borderline) and Beau Bridges (who really should have been dragged from his bed and flensed with knives for this shit).

Between adverts like this, Megaman and the word "Fuck," Seanbaby launched an entire career without having to write a single joke. That kid better be careful not to get those games wet. Actually those games suck ass, throw em to the sharks.

As a tool for historians studying the lulz, it serves as a happy reminder of a time when internet humor was a gentler place. It is furthermore a WTF-stupid stroll down memory lane, and a chance to sample firsthand some of the first proto-memes: "Power Glove" and "He Touched My Breast."

It's also so bad it will peel your eyes.

The Plot

The movie centers around Corey, played by Fred "Delicious Shota" Savage. Lulzologists claim that this movie was made before Fred's career got XBAWKS HUEG, but the primary sources are conflicting - just look at that VHS cover up there. Beau Bridges did "The Fabulous Baker Boys" and Christian Slater did "Heathers" in THE SAME FUCKING YEAR AS THIS, and they're not even HEADLINED. Jesus, that's got to sting. Not only that but they cut half of Mario's motherfucking FACE off. At a time in history when Mario was making more money than Scientology, they had permission to use Mario on their film poster and they didn't even put him central. Wow.

Corey's parents are divorced, and he has a half-brother called Jimmy. All is not well for Jimmy, however. Corey gets to live in a coked-up version of the inside of every ten year old boy's head where Beau Bridges is your dad, Christian Slater is your big brother and there's an NES installed on the corner of every street just in case someone keels over from Metroid withdrawal on the way to work. Meanwhile, Jimmy has to live with Evil Mom who wants to have him taken away.

It's not completely clear what the fuck Jimmy's deal is. "Rain Man" was released the previous year and autism was the big new scary monster under the bed (instead of the kid you give a dead arm to on the school bus). The Wizard is obviously trying to cash in on that, but it's kind of stuffed by the fact that if staring blankly at everything, never talking to people, spending your whole life playing console games and trying to get away from your bitch stepmom makes you autistic then...well, you get the idea.

They also pussy out in the end and put in a subplot about Jimmy having been traumatized by the death of his sister, but by this time you're unlikely to care anyway. The Wizard tries to appeal to the underdog in all of us, but instead the only clear message you come away with is that the reason there were no lulz in the eighties is because people with Asperger's Syndrome were apparently put into concentration camps. We'll move on.

Unwilling to lose the family lolcow, Corey kidnaps Jimmy and sets out on a road trip across Murica. Along the way they meet ~~Hairy~~ Haley. Ah, Haley. A fossilized relic of an era when even the loli actors had bigger eyebrows than the grown women of today. Corey makes friends with Haley, and they all set off on a magical journey of child abduction and obsessive-compulsive behavior on their way to the fifty thousand dollar Nintendo championships in Hollywood.

(The skillful way in which the Nintendo element is worked in at the end there is particularly good. It's like one of those dreams where you're in math class, but suddenly Angelina Jolie is the teacher, and then you're all going TO THE MOON!)

Memes

POWER GLOVE

HE TOUCHED MY BREAST!

Critique

	“	I love The Wizard. It's so bad.	„
	—Arizona Daily Star

	“	This sucks so bad that I didn't even like it in the 80s.	„
	—Juicy Cerebellum

	“	The problem is that the movie doesn't have much Nintendo in it, and some of that is wrong (when it's announced, for example, that the third level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been reached, the movie screen clearly shows the first level).	„
	—Roger Ebert