Flashback Friday: Short Circuit

This week's Flashback Friday focuses on the 1986 movie, Short Circuit. When I saw this film in theaters, I remember choking because I thought it was so funny. Number Five's "malfunction" was simply hilarious and he's certainly one of cinema's most memorable characters (a mechanical "E.T.").

In case you've never seen it, it's about a company (NOVA) that made robots for governmental use as a powerful weapon. Model Number 5 got struck by lightning and "short circuited." It disobeyed orders, went off on its own, and manages to leave the company's property and end up at an animal lover's house. The lady, Stephanie, thinks she's visited by an alien from space and proceeds to teach Number 5 about everything he needs to know to function on our planet. Number 5 soaks up "input" with remarkable speed, but soon, Stephanie discovers that he's merely a robot and gets angry. They learn that something remarkable happened to Number 5...he's no mere robot. Number 5...is alive!

Adventure and comedy continue with NOVA people coming after their pricey, malfunctioning robot, and Newton (played by Steve Guttenberg), along with his sidekick with a hilarious Indian accent, are caught in the middle. NOVA wants to destroy Number 5, Newton wants to fix the malfunction, and Stepanie and Number 5 want to prove that he is alive.

I remember when I first saw the film in the 1980s, I thought the scenery was awesome and wanted to live in the area where it was filmed. I actually didn't know that it was filmed in and around Astoria, Oregon until recently. After my family's drive along the Oregon coast and to Astoria last October, I watched the film to see if I recognized any of it. Sure enough, the scenes in Astoria brought a sort of deja vu. "Hey! We were just there!" That was pretty cool. Astoria has also been seen in films like The Goonies and Kindergarten Cop. It's a town of about 10,000 to 12,000 residents, with Victorian homes on steep hills. It's nicknamed "the San Francisco of the North." The town is located at the mouth of the Columbia River and has an awesome bridge to Washington.

Short Circuit is one of the rare comedies that can always elicit a laugh from me, no matter how many times I've seen it. One of the interesting things about the film is the idea that Number 5 finally convinces Newton that he's alive by laughing at a joke. Newton, always the scientist, wasn't convinced until that point. Number 5 was nothing more than a computer program that does what the programmer tells it to. When Number 5 turns three of the other models into a Three Stooges parody, Newton is the only one who found it funny. Maybe the film is on to something...where a sense of humour is seen as a mark of intelligence.

In 1988, the sequel came out and it was a major disappointment. Gone were Newton and Stephanie (supposedly living life in Montana, as hinted at the end of the original film). Instead, Number Five (self named "Johnny 5") hangs out in New York with the sidekick character, played by Fisher Stevens. It was unmemorable and unnecessary. And it bombed at the box office. Proof that lightning doesn't strike twice for some stories.

I've seen online some comparisons between the robot in Short Circuit and the one in Wall-E. The similarities are a bit too curiously similar, that it makes you wonder if Number 5 served as the inspirational model. Anyhow, after this film came out in the 80s, I wanted a robot of my own someday. Now, however, I've read enough about "artificial intelligence" where I don't think I would want one (see I, Robot if you still think robots are harmless and cool). I'll stick with the Hollywood fantasy version of a robot.