"The kid that comes in a can." (For all you rich lazy asshole consumers)
Ned Beatty and Polly Holliday star in this made for TV movie about a genetically engineered "Instant Child." Before you wonder just how far I've reached into the bottom of the barrel for this... I'm not sorry to say that I'd recommend this movie far more than I'd recommend Steven Spielberg's "A.I." And just why in the hell would I do that? Because these days, millions of dollars aren't buying good stories. Yes, this movie was made as a PBS special, has the production value of 10 minutes of a Sesame Street vignette, while running almost an hour and 45 minutes, but it's actually about something and these days--that's worth more than the price of a new release Blue-Ray or an Imax 3-D movie with the glasses... Movies these days are shit, hell, they're worse than shit, and you get absolutely nothing out of them. It's like eating genetically engineered MacDonalds, including the fillers and pink slime and preservatives. Here's a movie that has everything from bad acting, cardboard props and full of more cliches than a 'webisode' on youtube made by 14 year olds, and yet, it is far more intelligent than anything the millionaire writers and producers have come up with in the last decade. It has a little something to say about society, perfection, science and many other things--that even a kid could understand... something that has been totally lost on modern society. It has gotten so bad I have to dig up old cheap-ass PBS children's movies from 1985 on VHS to tell it...
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, this movie has more intelligence than all three Transformers movies, the entire Twilight Series, and most of the 'blockbusters' of the last 6 years combined. This fossil of daytime Public Television, a "science fiction" oddity, reminded me of the old series "Tales from the Darkside," which probably nobody's heard of. It was a Twilight Zone knockoff anthology series with stories like this one. You'd have your share of horror and weirdness, but sometimes something like this would pop up. Back then, you'd roll your eyes and wonder who the hell approved their scripts, but these days, it's like looking back and wondering just how fucking stupid the world has become that to get one of these would mean astounding the masses with esoteric knowledge summoned from the divine. It's very "Ray Bradbury" if that's possible to say without getting accused of being a sci-fi nerd...
(Another simple fact that reviewers on IMDB are "complaining" that this movie is "Orwellian" is just another reason to like it. What kind of asshole would complain about something like that? How dare these filmmakers tell children that it's okay to not be perfect and that genetically engineering is a silly idea! It's hard to believe this is a CONTROVERSIAL film today...)
It's really simple, Max Wright, (the crackhead Dad from ALF) is a genetic scientist who sells "Instant Children" to rich assholes. They are genetically engineered to be perfect, and they come in a can. "Konrad" is delivered accidentally to a middle-aged 'free spirit' hippie-chick. She is poor and makes rugs by hand. Ned Beatty is a music teacher/music store owner who hangs out with her from time to time. Her husband has disappeared in the Himalayas somewhere and she hasn't seen him for 10 years. She and Ned Beatty take care of the kid, and of course slowly learn to love him--but--it's really not about pulling your heart strings like some Spielberg cheese-fest, it's about imperfection, it's about learning to live with what you have, and while it's true message comes through abundantly clear, one wonders how it is that movies these days have so little to say, when you can see how easy it really is from watching a movie like this.
The evil company which made Konrad sends out security teams to spy on the family with surveillance vans and finds out how imperfect they are. Wright also discovers his computer made an error and they decide to 'recall' Konrad. I won't spoil the rest, but the movie has a plot, with neat little resonances, and everything ties up towards the end just fine. It's so cheaply made that some sequences are filmed in 16mm while others are made with video. It's a pretty familiar 1985 TV quality, and yet ultimately, none of this really matters in the end, including the chroma-key transformation of the kid in the can. You and your kids would love this movie, that is if it still exists somewhere in any video form. I watched it on BWE Video's VHS format, and I have no idea just how readily available it is, but if you're interested in teaching your kids to be normal, and maybe even have a little discussion about genetic engineering, and how fucking twisted society is out there, this is the perfect tool. If you're interested in transporting back to a more innocent time (though it may make you very depressed), then I'd definitely recommend this. It's not so bad it's good, but it has Max Wright from ALF, which alone will send you down memory lane. It's story is ultimately amusing, and worthwhile, that is if you have a working brain as well as emotions, and a beating human heart. This film could be a litmus test to see if you're human, to see if you can not only manage to be entertained by its weirdness, but by it's quaintness and intelligence. Is it enough for you? Do you really really need a 200 million dollar budget with millionaire asshole corporate committees writing and making movies for you? This film may be a cheap pack of strawberries you bought by the side of the road from some guy who grew them in his backyard, but damn are they good, with no pesticides, not genetically engineered, and not coated with chemicals, and they're practically wild...you still might have to wash off some actual dirt from the very ground they came from when you get home, but you'll not find anything else like them out there, except perhaps your own back yard. Hollywood millions can't buy a human heart, and they've killed or shoved all the good writers into the gutter. Millionaire Hollywood hipsters can't write worth a shit and no amount of plagiarism and remakes will ever change that.
It's simple, it's decent, it makes sense, the characters have motivations, it has a plot, and it's driving towards something all for a reason, and it's unfortunately something that the psychotic assholes who continue to run the world will never understand, and so I'm saying, yes, if you happen to see this somehow on television, or on youtube sometime, it might be worth your time to take a fucking rest from your total bullshit delusional life and contemplate a few things that once were what being human was all about, this movie just might remind you of those things. The director's ego is absent, and it isn't stylish. Does it try to be hip? No. Does it try to impress with fancy special effects? No. While I grow tired of relentlessly attacking modern movies simply because they have no soul, I guess there's becoming less and less to do in this world, if I'm going to write about movies. This is 'the future' now whether you know it or not, and things weren't always this way. Have a taste of what people used to value, what they used to think and believe, because it's disappearing fast, and nobody cares. You'll never see a movie like this ever again folks, they'll never approve the message of this film as long as you live. Welcome to Americlonea, the land of the psychopathic narcissist who WISHES he were genetically engineered, who wishes everything was genetically engineered, who wishes death upon his neighbor 7 days a week simply for not believing his favorite talk show host. I like KONRAD, and I will continue to write more about films like it if I can, until they shoot me I guess, which looks like it will be very very soon. To accuse this movie of being 'simplistic' now days would be to suggest that Twilight or Transformers, or The Hangover for that matter is not only for people seriously lacking brain cells, it means that that those films were made for people with less consciousness than a brain damaged monkey stoned on crack. It means that it was simplistic for its time, and probably because it was made for children, and that many movies during its time were 100 times more intelligent than what we get now, it means that even this little cheap gem is worth more than 100 modern blockbusters for all it's reason, sanity and humanity. And don't tell me they only give people what they want, if as they say, the public is full of mindless morons, then they'll feed on whatever shit you give them won't they? This is the worst thing about watching a movie like this, it makes you realize just how fucked up the world is right now, how dystopic, how insane and vile. One might as well have just watched V for Vendetta for the same effect which is interesting. It's not there in the plot, it's simply just what you are watching that it becomes true horror when you realize how far the world has gone.
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