Genre Guesstimation – The Heavenly Kid (1985)

The idea behind this feature (Genre Guesstimation) is for me to watch a bunch of new movies (or ones that I haven’t seen many times) from the chosen monthly GG genre in order to expand my knowledge of movies within that particular genre.

This month’s genre has been chosen by Todd of The Forgotten Filmz Podcast and we will be reviewing our favorite 80’s Teen Films.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of Sep by sending them to teentodd@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Todd!

Let’s see if I felt that this movie would be worthy of being in the company of my others favorite movies in the genre of 80’s Teen Films…..

“A while? A while? There’s a f*cking Viking in here! ” – Bobby

Number of Times Seen – at least 3 times (cable in the 80’s and 8 Sep 2020)

Brief Synopsis – After dying during a drag race in the 1960’s , a teenager is sent back to Earth to help a troubled teen.

My Take on it – This is a film that I recall seeing on cable as a kid and remebered the basic premise, bit not much beyond that.

The story is unfortunately presented in a very simple and stereotypical way.

The movie tries to mix together 60’s ‘coolness’ with 80’s ‘geekiness’ and it just doesn’t work well enough because it clashes too much by the way that they do this.

The film does have an intriguing premise yet they miss out on so many opportunities that would help make things much more enjoyable as the story unfolds.

The film’s cast isn’t strong enough and they aren’t given enough to do.

The story follows a far too predictable pattern and this hurts things a lot along the way.

Bottom Line – Far too stereotypical story. The way that they try to mix the coolness of a character from the 60’s with the geekiness of one form the 80’s just doesn’t mesh well enough and things never work well enough. The premise itself is intriguing yet they fail to really take advantage of some great opportunities to make things more interesting to watch unfold. The cast isn’t given enough to do and things come across too predictably for its own good.

MovieRob’s Favorite Trivia – In an attempt to cash in on the success of Back to the Future (1985) the German release was named “Zurück aus der Vergangenheit” which translates as “Back from the Past”. (From IMDB)

Genre Grandeur Worthy? – Not even close. The story is far too boring and predictable for its own good.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy (5/10)