Wargames

Wargames (1983)

Runtime: 114 minutes

Directed by: John Badham

Starring: Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, Dabney Coleman, John Wood

From: United Artists

Here is a relatively famous movie from the 80’s that I hadn’t seen, even though I’m interested in both 80’s cheese and computers. Thursday, I was able to see this for the first time, and that’s no April Fool’s joke.

I’m sure you have heard of this, but if you haven’t, it’s about a brilliant but underachieving computer geek (Broderick) who has a galpal (Sheedy). He lives in Seattle; I say that’s no surprise as I’m sure the filmmakers even then knew of Microsoft. He tries to hack a computer in California in order to find out about an upcoming model of computers; he accidentally breaks into the NORAD computer (named WOPR, called “Whopper”) that manages the launch of nuclear weapons. With his galpal, he plays a game with WOPR called “Global Thermonuclear War”. Later on he sees that the start of this game unknowingly started a real-life scenario where WOPR playing the game appears as if the start of nuclear war is actually taking place. The government tracks him down-as they believe he’s a spy for the Soviets!-but no one at NORAD (including Coleman) believes his story that what WOPR is saying is just a fantasy. Matthew has to try and find a way to convince them…

I won’t give away anything more. I will say that while this is popcorn faire that seems to be geared towards the younger set, it’s at least entertaining for what it is. You have the likeable protagonists and enemies who of course are adults and don’t believe what the highschoolers are telling them, yet aren’t unlikeable people that you can’t stand watching, which is a problem that I have sometimes with certain flicks. So, if it sounds like something of interest to you and you haven’t seen it yet, I’d say it’s worth checking out. You have some drama, adventure, and comedy (the scene about asexual reproduction got a big lol from me). No word on the made for DVD sequel that just came out less than 2 years ago, except that apparently it isn’t too good; shocker of shockers that a random DVD only sequel sucks, right?

By the way, to me it was interesting seeing all the old computer technology from the time and how it pales in comparison to what we’re fortunate to have now. I know it inspired many later computer geeks, considering that in the film, the act of war dialing (named after the movie; it’s dialing all the numbers in a particular city to try and find a particular company’s private phone number) was later used in stuff like “war driving”, where you cruise around in a car and try to find an unsecure wireless connection so that you can surf the web on a laptop free of charge. Speaking of computer geeks, even back then the term was well-known. Wait until you see early on the scene where Broderick visits some ubernerds; it’s exactly how you imagine the stereotypical computer geek to be.

I’ll be back next weekend with at least one new review.