Observational Oddities

I think you're putting too much analytic criticism into the movie on both points- just watch it and ejoy escaping from being an adult for awhile!... :o)

"Yippee-ki-yay..." John McClane

In regards to it being an Atari commercial: there's a ColecoVision displayed in the Game Keeper, which I'm sure Atari wasn't happy about. :) It's funny, because it's stuck high up on one of the shelves, with part of it being obscured. It reminds me of how Pepsi wasn't happy with Marty ordering a Tab in Back To The Future, but Zemeckis loved the joke so much he left it in.

As for the schizophrenia part...
You should remember that imaginary friends are all part of growing up--Davey knows Jack isn't real, which is why he never mentions him to anyone else, and never speaks to him when someone else is around.
It isn't actually schizophrenia, it's an externalization of the internal dialouge. Putting all his guts, cynicism, and knowledge into Jack, and leaving the cautious part for himself.

It's the Jack character that keeps me coming back to this movie. What other movie has actually shown a true, honest-to-goodness imaginary friend, and not turned it to some kind of mental illness, or else making them some sort of ghost or demon?
Without Jack, it would've just been a half-rate Hitchcock knock-off. But Jack made it into a kid's dream come true.

Techtronics was a good generic name for a computer company. I think any resemblance to TI (Texas Instruments) was coincidence.

I think the writers/producers just wanted a simple sounding name. Not too technical or complicated, that the audience would have a hard time understanding. But also enough to connote that it's a major computer company. Techtronics sounds pretty good on the phone (when the receptionist answers).

Davey's connection with the real world might have been at risk (running through traffic). Odd, erratic behavior at the mall or bus stop. But he did have a real friend with Kim. He seemed to be abe to relate with people well. I would say he was normally adjusted, but a very active imagination.

The 11 year old kid just lost his mom and felt alienated from his dad, he had nobody to turn to but his own imagination. There is a reason why Jack looks exactly like his absent father. Wow, you really stink at analyzing movies.

1. The bad guy is a big wig at Techtonics. And if you look closely while Kim is in their office, the Techtonics logo prominantly features the state of Texas, extremely close to the Texas Instruments (TI) logo. TI was a huge competitor with Atari at the time, with their TRS home computer line. If this movie wasn't paid for by Atari, then it was definitely made by an avid fan that had no love loss for it's competitors

It was Textronics, not Techtronics.

To me, an 'observational oddity' was that there seemed to be an ENORMOUS mirror right outside a building's window. Or more like, a small distance away. What the heck was that supposed to be? Why would there be such a mirror there? It had to be enormous to be able to reflect multiple floors and all.

At first, I thought they meant to make the viewer believe that a window on another building, some small distance away, could reflect everything the way it did - but of course, that would have been impossible. The reflection would have been pretty similar to the view from the window into the other building that we saw, and would have included some wall, windows - perhaps even other windows, etc.

So no matter how you explain this, it's a real ODDITY indeed. From there on, the movie started really to suffer from implausibilities, coincidence-overdoses (what are the odds that the 'secret information' containing cartridge's name is "Cloak&Dagger", when that's exactly the kind of stuff the kid is interested in? Also, the kid even says "Cloak and Dagger" out loud at one point previously, making it sure that the audiences know what movie they are watching? What are the odds of the whole eventuality happening to a kid like that, anyway?). And apparently no one questions the pretty clear brain damage or mental unhealth of this kid - he sees visions of some 'secret agent' that doesn't exist, and then wonders why no one believes him?

Also, the cliché of 'looking like he's crying wolf', that was even parodied in The Simpsons, was so overdone probably even by 1984 that it makes me almost puke to see it. "Honest, he was here! I saw him! - Yeah, right, kid. You have read too many comic books/played too many video games/whatever".. sigh.

For an adult's movie, the story and the whole presentation is just too stupid, childish, banal, naive, idiotic, clichéic, and predictable - for a kids' movie, there's a way-too-serious tone about it - people get murdered right in front of young kids, and thrown through real glass (you don't see this often in movies, it's always that cheap sugar-glass)! And it ends in flames? What the heck kind of a kids' movie is that?

Does this movie really even know what it wants to be?

The stupid, whiny, obnoxious, annoying twat of a sister (that he always just tolerated, like a good, feminazied, little self-hating, emasculated boy) was horrendous, but why didn't she and 'Elliott' ever decide on the RULES of the game properly, so that he COULD get hurt, and it would be equal? It's not that hard. Pick a good board game, stick to the rules, and it'll be fair for all, and there's no need for all that whining. What kind of a stupid game is that anyway, if one of the players can never be hurt? Why would 'Elliott' even assume anyone would want to play if he always has an advantage? What fun is it to win a game, where you can't get hurt or lose? Where's the challenge, where's the fun? Where's the point?

I also hate, I HATE movies that lie to me. I don't mean that they have DeLoreans with Flux Capacitors capable of moving a cool-looking, silvery car in time between (and only between) the years 0 and 9999, but I mean saying that "this kid is playing this game on an Atari 5200", and then the game being an "Arcade-only" game.

What a lying, incoherent mess this movie is. Just because it has 'Elliott' in it, doesn't make it a good movie. On the contrary - when you make a movie based on being able to cash in on a famous name, instead of based on a really good story, you are doomed to fail.

I can't believe it was possible to make this kind of almost-modern-looking TRASH in the earlier eighties! It's almost impossible to think that it could have happened, but clearly, it did.

I can't believe that an early-eighties movie, that has the actor that made me cry as a kid starring, can be this ATROCIOUSLY AWFUL.

This is almost as bad as the AVGN movie that plagiarized this movie.

By the way, the first thing I noticed about this movie was an overdose of Atari product placement. There are ONLY Atari products in the room where the 'real story' begins, and ONLY Atari posters, as far as I can remember. Who decorates a room like that? Just HOW much of an Atari fanboy do you have to be to _ONLY_ have Atari computers, consoles and products? You know, Commodore 64 was the most sold computer in the world, it even got to the Guinness Book of Records.

There were also other interesting computers and consoles, even in 1984. But no, Atari was the only thing in existence, according to this movie, when it came to home computer and game console systems. Sheesh!

And they use Atari 5200 cartridges of all things? Why not Atari 2600 or Atari 7800 or Atari 800? Come on, Atari 5200 was the WORST thing the corporation ever made! Was anyone ever able to make it work, with its clunky, nonworking controllers?

Just watch the excellent AVGN review of that. Who the heck ever owned an Atari 5200?

(Yes, isn't it funny how the AVGN movie could be so bad, while the AVGN episodes - at least some of them - could be so timelessly excellent classics?)

What a FAILURE of a movie this is.