Short Circuit, PG, 1986, runtime 1 hour 39 minutes
Number Five is ALIVE!!!
I borrowed Short Circuit from the library the other day and got around to watching it. I’ve always been certain I watched it as a kid and remembered the movie. About halfway through, it occurred to me that I very, very vaguely remembered this movie. I more remember references to this movie growing up. I think maybe I watched it with my older cousins when I was very young, because maybe 90% of it felt the tiniest bit familiar or completely new to me.
The movie is totally goofy and feels a little like the 80s threw up on it, but the classic core theme of it remains timeless. Number Five is zapped by an electrical surge and malfunctions, beginning to wake up and become self-aware. The movie comically examines what it means to be alive, morality, and the right of all sentience to survive. Number Five learns what it means to be dead when he accidentally adorably jumps onto a cricket while trying to follow and mimic it. When he understands that the cricket can’t be fixed and that being disassembled would make him cease to exist as well, Number Five works out a moral compass for himself and believes it’s not right to take away life. I won’t, and don’t need to, spoil the entire plot of this movie, but of course there are bad guys about along with awkward nerd encounters.
This movie is definitely worth watching, though, and it should be on anybody’s list of must see 80s movies. I thoroughly enjoyed the ridiculousness and overall it was worth my time to watch this “kids” movie as an adult (oddly, for a PG rating I think it had a lot of beyond-PG moments).