One day, when I was a 12 years old boy, I was at the sea in the summer and in the afternoon right after the dinner in the most hot hours of the day I watched this movie in TV. I always liked stuffs of science, physics and chemistry. The Manhattan Project was so great that I always wished to watch it again. I was amused by this film, I found it great and really awesome. From time to time this movie was coming up in my mind. However, I was never able to watch it again when I was a teenager. I remembered the story, the atomic bomb, the kid building it; and with the help of a web search engine I was able to get the title of the movie. So today - in the year 2012, 13 years later - I managed to obtain and to watch this movie again and in its original language as well. This movie has made me make a jump in the past, and this is what I liked the most. The movie itself is no more up-to-date for today's people. It's indeed a movie for teenagers of the '80-'90, like I was in the past. The film shows the most absurd things possible (making a nuke at home? stealing plutonium from a lab in a clear plastic bottle?) and so is the story absolutely unrealistic. But if I were a teenage in the '90 again, i'd like it a lot again. This movie really made my fantasy fly as a kid. Great memories, great film. Let alone what is "for real" possible in real life. From the eyes of a child, this movie results in a good mix of science fiction and thriller.

This movie probably belongs on a lot of lists, but this belongs in the category of being a comedy, the same way that baseball should be extended to eighteen innings to better compete with golf. One list that this movie would be on would be "If it weren't for another movie, this one wouldn't have gotten made". The movie that opened the door for this one is "WarGames" which this movie has one theme in common, "How close to Armageddon are we, really?". While I did have problems with some of the movie's minor points as to how the bomb came to be built, the choice by the editors to edit out some of the more dated comments that occurred after the science fair was a good move, especially in the post-9/11 world, given the Science Fair was held in New York City.

I was subjected to this utter nonsense at a friend's house. I won't go into why. At first I thought it "wasn't bad." But as the "plot" continued, I thought someone must have spiked the punch and I was high on LSD. This is one of the silliest movies ever made. There are so many stupid ideas one has to wonder if it was designed to make fun of movies as a whole. The "brilliant" kid wants to build a bomb to expose the lab for making plutonium? Hey, pick up the phone and make a call. He thinks that he can't get into any trouble because "I'm only a kid." Who told him that? For a bright boy, he doesn't seem like it. He breaks into the lab and steals plutonium... that ought to be worth 20 to life right there. He's Edward Teller in disguise and builds an A bomb with his Mattel Do it yourself kit. Yeah... sure. Best of all, he handles the plutonium with his mom's dish washing rubber gloves?!!! He'd be dead in no time. He takes his bomb to the big fair to show off? To show off what? That he's a complete nincompoop? Even the other nerds know better than that. If I hadn't been waiting for another friend in order to leave, I would have exited this complete nonsense as soon as he started playing cutesy with the plutonium strapped to the back of his toy car. This was really, really bad. 1 star for Lithgow desperately seeking a plot. 1 Star for Nixon trying ever so hard not to break out in uproarious laughter while Collet tries to explain why he wants to make a bomb.

I remember watching this movie in the 80s, and thinking it was a good film. There was, however, one major problem that I had with the film - the fact that the main protagonist seems to be a dummy when it comes to anything other than science. Forgetting about the fact that Paul, one of the main characters, essentially exposed a bunch of people to high- grade plutonium (no mention about any medical crisis for all the people around Paul after the happy ending), the kicker comes when he's finally confronted in a hotel in New York by John Lithgow and a bevy of military men who would like nothing more than to lock him away for a long time. Paul's nonchalance comes out in the exchange, "They can't do anything to me." "Why not?" "Because I'm underage." HUH? You're smart enough to build a freaking nuclear bomb by yourself, including smart enough to know where to get some explosive material needed to blow the bomb up. You're also smart enough to have fooled a high-security system with a bunch of frisbees and a helpful girlfriend in order to get the plutonium (and smart enough to temporarily cover your tracks by inserting shampoo into the jar so it's not immediately noticed as missing). But what in the world makes you think that they'll let you go because "I'm underage?" I suppose the script writer needed to show a little naiveté - after all, if Paul knew the full gravity of what he was doing, he might not have done something as reckless as he did. Instead, he might just have gone ahead with an expose without needing to win first prize at a science contest.