The early 80’s was an interesting time to be a teenager. While I was too young to experience the era myself, it has been well preserved in the movies, TV and music that defined it. Two things that rose to prominence in the early days of the 1980’s were arcades and teen sex comedies. The little-known film Joysticks mashes to the two together, but does it work?
An obvious Porky’s clone
Porky’s more or less set the standard of the early 80’s teen sex comedy, which spawned plenty of clones and imitators. The filmmakers obviously used that as inspiration for Joysticks.
The movie begins with an over-the-top, nerdy kid driving to his first day of work at the video arcade. At a stop sign, two college co-eds pull up to flirt with the nerd and pull down their tops. Yup, boobs show up in the first few minutes of this movie.
It turns out they’re trying to get into a sorority and need a picture of a nerd with his pants down to get in. They manage to get his pants off, a Polaroid of him in his boxers and they leave him stranded without pants.
The first scene sets the tone for the movie and after arriving at the arcade, the nerd runs across some of the most absurdly stupid stereotypes I’ve ever seen -- a Monk who has become addicted to the arcade, a valley girl with a distractingly terrible accent, a group of completely non-threatening punks, a fat, gross arcade junkie who desperately wants to be John Belushi and the preppie young guy who manages the arcade.
It seems like this movie is a contemporary parody of early 80’s teen sex comedies, but it was released in 1983. Once we digest the characters and setting, the basic plot of the movie unfolds in which the rich and powerful father of the valley girl hates the arcade because its full of hooligans and he doesn’t like his daughter hanging out there, so he tries to get it closed. The gamers have to band together to make sure he’s not able to get their favorite hangout shut down.
How is it?
Bluntly, this movie is terrible. The humor is stupid, cringeworthy and pandering. The movie makes sure to throw boobs at you every 20 minutes or so, whether it makes sense or not. There’s an extended ‘strip gaming’ scene where you just watch the two college girls from the beginning playing an arcade game in the manager’s office while topless. The plot is as dumb as the worst genre offenders of the era. It would probably get rejected from USA Up All Night because it didn’t meet their standards.
I really wanted to like it for all the arcade games featured throughout the movie. It even uses a crude Pac-Man animation as scene wipes, however the movie really doesn’t take advantage of the arcade setting the way I’d hoped. They're there and mostly kept in the background, but the terrible jokes, nudity and gross-out humor are what's front and center in Joysticks.
It might be worth a watch simply out of curiosity or with a group of friends on “bad movie night*, but it shames the already low-brow movies it’s trying to copy.
Joysticks is available to stream on Amazon Prime video (subscription-only) and Tubi.tv (free with ads).
So have you seen Joysticks? If so, what did you think? What is your favorite video game movie that's not based on an actual game? Let's discuss!
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Cover Image Source: Amazon
