Review of Joysticks

Joysticks (1983)
2/10
Dull and disgusting in equal measure
11 February 2016
In the '80s, the "fat guy who is always eating" was a staple of low-end comedies like Greydon Clark's "Joysticks". I can only assume that we are supposed to laugh when we see him: "Look, it's a fat guy! And he's eatin! Har-har! No wonder he's fat!" I guess you have to hand it to the producers of "Joysticks" for adding the additional comedic twist of making their version of this character absolutely repulsive. His hair is so greasy it appears wet, his shirt, stretched over his massive gut, is as filthy as a dishrag. He eats cookies covered with tomato sauce.

I could not stand to look at this character, and he is in almost every scene.

Did I mention this is supposed to be a comedy?

The plot of this "comedy" goes like this: a pretty boy runs a video arcade. An evil businessman played by Joe Don Baker, known for classics like "Charley Varrick" and "Walking Tall", wants to shut him down for reasons the movie seems to have forgotten to provide. There is also a group of multi-coloured '80s punks, the Vidiots, that the pretty boy wants to kick out: thus the stage is set for not one but two video game tournaments, in which the players use massive joysticks, the knobs so large the players' hands rest upon them like they are crystal balls.

There is, of course, also a "nerd" "character", such a stalwart of these movies that there is nothing to say about him except for his being in the movie.

This movie really taxed me. There was no tension whatever to be had in watching people play Pac Man in 1983, and there surely isn't now. If there were, the filmmaker certainly has no idea how to show it, so those sequences are merely boring and pointless. The rest of the movie disgusted me more than anything else. There's a little nudity, of course, and the movie also supplies perhaps the most repulsive and unconvincing transvestite I have ever seen. The evil businessman has two moronic henchmen - don't they all - and in a movie this bad, someone has to dress up in drag, so it may as well be them.

I was really glad when it was over, and hopefully I'll forget about it as soon as possible.
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