THE INVISIBLE KID
US, 1989, 95 minutes, Colour.
Jay Underwood, Chyna Phillips, Karen Black.
Directed by Avery Crounse.
Invisible Kid is a variation on the invisible man theme - designed for a young teenage audience. (It also has some suggestive overtones and naughty sequences for this age bracket, joking about nudity, peering at girls in their locker rooms and bedrooms, knocking people over at basketball games, etc.)
The tone of the film and this naughtiness means that it is trite rather than good comedy. There are the usual ingredients of the mysterious formula , the young scientist, his oddball friend, the fixing of the basketball competition and the exposing of the plot. There is also overdone satire on daffy parents - in the form of Karen Black, who is exasperated with her son and forever getting the television advice of Brother Theodore (who plays himself). Jay Underwood (The Boy Who Could Fly) does a competent enough job - but the film is silly rather than good comedy.
1. Teenage film? Variation on the invisible man theme?
2. Special effects and stunts for the invisibility, the clothes, the disrupting of the basketball, the final chases? Songs and musical score?
3. Aimed at the teenage audience? Teenage kids, school problems, school corruption...?
4. The focus on Grover, his admiration for scientists, his father, his experiments, the formula, his searching for it? Discovering the invisibility? Exercising it? His friend? Their going to the basketball, discovering the plot, being caught with no clothes on, having to run away? The friend using it for prurient reasons, with the girls' shower block, etc? Grover and his earnestness, wanting Baxter to give him the formula? Friendship with Cindy, clashes with Donny? His continual antagonism with his mother? The police? The final chases? The happy ending - and discovery of the formula, wanting to publicise it, discovering that the bird-droppings were the essential element?
5. The sketch of the friend, daffy, using the formula, looking at the girls, in jail, escaping? Helping with the finale? Cindy and her friendship, relationship with Donny, helping Grover? Donny as tough, spurning the others, playing basketball, with the steroids, the false grades, caught up in the fixing of the games? Wanting to reform? Playing the game properly?
6. Mum and her daffiness, not able to cope, forever ringing up the television counselling, the counsellor's abuse of her? Discovering Chuck, sharing their friendships, their concerns, the happy ending?
7. Baxter and the administration of the school, the gangsters, the fixing of the games, promoting Donny? The chase disguised as bears? Their being caught?
8. The police, Chuck and his TV listening, complaints about his partner, giving him the opportunity to arrest the conspirators? With Mum at the end?
9. The usual invisible man routines - always enjoyable, the special effects?
10. What audience would best enjoy this kind of film?
