Welcome to an exciting year-long project here at The Nerdy. 1982 was an exciting year for films giving us a lot of films that would go on to be beloved favorites and cult classics. It was also the start to a major shift in cultural and societal norms, and some of those still reverberate to this day.
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We’re going to pick and choose which movies we hit, but right now the list stands at nearly four dozen.
Yes, we’re insane, but 1982 was that great of a year for film.
The articles will come out – in most cases – on the same day the films hit theaters in 1982 so that it is their true 40th anniversary. All films are also watched again for the purposes of these reviews and are not being done from memory. In some cases, it truly will be the first time we’ve seen them.
This time around, it’s October 15, 1982, and we’re off to see Love Child and Android!
Quick side note: Since we launched this series this year, we’ve discovered that Vintage Video Podcast is doing the exact same project with two differences: First, it’s audio (naturally), and second, they are doing every major film. We’ve listened to numerous episodes and it’s fun checking off their thoughts against my own. Check them out over at Vintage Video Podcast.
Android
The early 1980s were such a golden age of sci-fi. Everyone was hunting for whatever they could come up with to cash in on the success of Star Wars. While some were successful, others were horrific. Every so often you would get one that about as middle of the road as humanly possible.
I’m sure you can figure out where Android ended up.
The story follows Max, an illegal android on a space station that is growing increasingly curious about sex. Thankfully, a ship full of criminals arrive and one of them happens to be a woman. So it’s time for Max to try to pick up a woman.
It’s as awkward as you might expect.
Meanwhile, the Doctor that built Max is working on a female android as well named Cassandra One. The Doctor hopes to now imprint her on Maggie, the female criminal, so that it can be more human-like.
Honestly, the movie is fine, it’s just so middle-of-the-road in quality that you just don’t care. I’m usually a couple weeks ahead of these review in my watching, and when I saw it needed to be written I had to go find a photo to even remind me of what the story was. It’s truly disposable entertainment which was quite common for this era.
You can thank the rise of the video store for a lot of that as it allowed an onslaught of totally forgettable movies as everyone knew someone would rent them on a Friday night.
Love Child
Love Child had the potential to be an engaging film, but just didn’t understand what it would take to get it across that goal line.
Based on the true story of a woman who went to prison and had to fight to keep her baby with her when she got pregnant by a guard, the film pushed the important part to the back. I love a good amount of backstory in a lot of cases, and knowing how characters got to where they are, but Love Child spends so much time on that part that the baby/court case ends up being only about 30 minutes of a 96-minute movie. It compresses what should have been the most interesting part of the story and leaves you feeling very unfulfilled.
At the script level, at the production level, and at the editing level so many of these problems could have been corrected. Instead we end up with two very bloated first acts and a very rushed third.
The performances are all excellent, and Amy Madigan shines as Terry Jean Moore, but she and everyone else are let down by a very shaky script that didn’t seem to understand the assignment.
1982 Movie Reviews will return on Oct. 22 with First Blood, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, and The Sender!
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