The Manhattan Project (1986) 5.8
A teen and his girlfriend make an atomic bomb with plutonium stolen from a scientist dating his mother. Director:Marshall Brickman |
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The Manhattan Project (1986) 5.8
A teen and his girlfriend make an atomic bomb with plutonium stolen from a scientist dating his mother. Director:Marshall Brickman |
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| 0Share... |
| Cast overview, first billed only: | |||
| John Lithgow | ... |
John Mathewson
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| Richard Council | ... |
Government
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Robert Schenkkan | ... |
Government Aide
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Paul Austin | ... |
General
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Adrian Sparks | ... |
Scientist
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Curt Dempster | ... |
Scientist
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Bran Ferren | ... |
Lab Assistant
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Christopher Collet | ... | |
| Jill Eikenberry | ... |
Elizabeth Stephens
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| Cynthia Nixon | ... |
Jenny Anderman
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Gregg Edelman | ... |
Science Teacher
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Abraham Unger | ... |
Roland
(as Abe Unger)
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| Robert Sean Leonard | ... |
Max
(as Robert Leonard)
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David Quinn | ... |
Tennis
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| Geoffrey Nauffts | ... |
Craig
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A teen and his girlfriend make an atomic bomb with plutonium stolen from a scientist dating his mother.
Here's a textbook example of all the post-'ET' rip-offs pitting bright teenagers against bad grown-ups, in this case packaged like an updated manual of mid-1980s commercial movie-making clichés. It's all here: the playful young smart-aleck prodigy (with attractive single mother and sexually active girlfriend); the wicked agents of federal bureaucracy; the solitary, sympathetic adult (as usual, a scientist); lots of distracting high-tech hardware; and a topical message. In more talented hands all these familiar ingredients might at least have been assembled with some style, but the comedy (?) plot (about the whiz-kid and his home built nuclear device) includes more lapses in logic, more contrived cleverness, and more implausible plot twists than even a teenage fantasy of this sort can support. Rule of thumb: never trust a movie that assumes its audience is less intelligent than the characters on screen.