mosquitodragon’s review published on Letterboxd:
"Are you sure you know what you're doing?"
"How do you think I built BB? I studied brain physiology and cognitive theory till it's coming out of my ears. I have ideas no one's ever thought of."
"I'll buy that."
Apparently the book this was based on was about an isolated, bullied 13 year old boy and the 11 year old girl who moved in next door and became his only friend. Wes Craven wanted to make a film in the spirit of that thriller/drama. But once the studio greenlit the project, the strings attached started deciding things like.. oh, no, you're Wes Craven, so this has to be a horror movie! And make it about teens. You know. Like that other movie you made that earned a shit-ton of bank.
Knowing the context will help you understand how this movie took on its final form, because the thing that kept hitting me throughout was just how goddamn stupid it all was. None of the characters have any appeal (the kids were aged up to their late teens and our protagonist is a popular over-achiever instead of the bulied loser - and didn't this dude get on my pecs in this movie - he was downright annoying). This guy can just casually design a robot, apparently. At one point he explains the sophistication of his robot by saying "Oh well, I wrote the program, but now he pretty much does what he wants", which is the most understated way to reveal that his home-made robot has ACHIEVED TRUE ROBOT SENTIENCE, FOR FUCK'S SAKE!!! It's supposed to make him impressively smart but he comes across as just not understanding the import of what he's stumbled into.
The girl (played by Kristy Swanson back when she was lovable) gets beaten to the point of brain-death by her abusive dad. And then our hero decides to put his robot's microchip brain into her head (because technology is awesome).
So far, so pretty idiotic. But then the film takes it one step further by having her actually die and so they have to steal her corpse in one of the most unconvincing heists ever put to film. And then despite her being dead, she comes back to life. Sometimes she walks like a robot, but sometimes she just walks like a human. No explanation is given for this. Her cadaverous blue face make-up changes from shot to shot.
Despite the robot she is supposedly now possessed by having no specific strength or agility (he used to trundle fragilely about the place like the one from Short Circuit) she is now super strong, can jump over cars and, at one point, she throws a basketball so hard at Anne Ramsey that it disintegrates her head like a cannonball hitting a watermelon.
And then, to add insult to all this injury to our intelligences, we get a final shock "sting" moment at the end of the film - Craven was constantly forced to throw these in - which makes less than zero sense because (and spoiler) a mean-faced version of the original robot comes out of her head. What? Has it gestated in her body like a xenomorph? Just what the hell was everybody snorting in the boardrooms where all Wes' studio notes were coming from. Oh, I guess that isn't all that hard to figure out...
However, for all the idiocy, the very silliness of the film makes it fairly watchable. Craven does his best with what he had to work with. And in fact, you could argue that the dumbest parts actually lift the movie - the basketball scene is clearly the best moment in the film, for instance (and for all its ridiculousness, it's extremely well shot and edited). Also, this is in essence an interesting riff on the Frankenstein myth. This is a scientist (a smartass computer geek kid being close enough to a scientist for an 80's horror movie) reanimating the dead via a brain transplant (in this case, a computerised brain into an organic vessel).
It's idiocy, but it's reasonably fun idiocy, at least.
