MovieRob’s Childhood Flashback Movie Challenge – Midnight Madness (1980)

Welcome to my Flashback Movie Challenge.  The goal here is to re-watch movies from your youth that you loved back then and see if you and your “young self from yesteryear” can agree on your opinion of this movie or whether years of new perspectives have changed those feelings.

If you would like to participate in this, feel free to shoot me an email (rob@movierob.net) with your review so I can post it.  It’s very important that you show the similarities or differences between the you of now and the you of then.

Good luck to all!!!!  I look forward to seeing how we all fare.

 

To start off my challenge, I present you with my review of Midnight Madness (1980), this movie was one of my favorites growing up and I have very fond memories of it.

Now, on to the review…..

“See you at the finish line… wherever that may be.” – Leon

Number of Times Seen – Too many to count (Cable throughout the early 80’s, 14 Oct 2002 and 2 Jan 2014)

Brief Synopsis – 5 teams compete on an all-night race around LA by solving clues at each location that will take them to the next one.

My Take on it – Re-watching this, I cannot help but see the similarities between this movie and my favorite Reality Show, The Amazing Race (TAR).  I wonder if the creator of TAR saw this one day and decided to use it as a basis for that hit Reality TV show.

I have loved TAR ever since I got hooked on it 3 years ago and subsequently have watched all 23 seasons twice since then plus another 10 seasons of International editions once each.

This movie is a smaller scale of TAR obviously since it only takes place in LA and not around the world.

The plot is simple minded, the dialogue in certain instances bland and some scenes are very 80’s cheesy. (the tone of music changes when a couple are getting closer for instance), but I still found the movie quite entertaining and enjoyable.  The clues used between each location are quite clever and some I remembered and some not.

The main actors here aren’t very well known actors besides Stephen Furst (known from Animal House (1978), Babylon 5, and St. Elsewhere.

Paul Reubens (Pee-Wee Herman) has a small cameo and it should be noted that this was the movie debut of a VERY young Michael J. Fox in a smallish role.

Bottom Line – Still loved it after all these years.  Interesting how it is similar to The Amazing Race.  I wonder if my love for that actually began when I was 6….  Recommended!!

Rating – Globe Worthy

 

Overall, I’m very glad I re-watched this and think that in this case my younger self and me agree that this is a very fun and enjoyable movie.

 

_______________________________________

Check out my *updated* movie stats here

To see my reviews of all Oscar Best Picture Winners click here