“How many times do I have to tell you, it’s not ‘computer games,’ it’s ‘interactive computer fiction!'”

Justin’s rating: 10 PRINT ‘Mutant Reviewers rules!’ 20 GOTO 10

Justin’s review: Last week on Computer Teens of the ’80s: Our elite genial hackers accidentally triggered World War III, did a bunch of cool stuff with lasers, upgraded a car’s software to win a race, and went into outer space. And now… back to our program!

Hey, that’s a computer pun! I approve!

A highly ambitious terrorist force has planted 250 “suicide hit squads” on American soil to, I dunno, randomly kill people running in front of Vasquez Rocks. Our only defense is Captain Dan Jackson and his mighty moustache, who answers to no one and sleeps with a top TV news anchor. He’s somewhat hamstung by his chain of command, which is solely limited to an incredibly fat and shabbily dressed White House security advisor. I suspect this is the director, but I’m not going to put in the research to find that out.

To give Jackson some extra motivation, his girlfriend is gunned down by the terrorists. Want to know how he finds out? His best friend grabs her corpse, stuffs it into a station wagon, drives over to where he’s hanging out, and then literally dumps her corpse in his arms so that he can have a moment of motivational anguish. It may be the single best thing in this entire movie. And then it turns out she’s not dead, but still, he thought she was.

Captain Dan Jackson is about to get some help in the form of a gaggle of local teens who are addicted to playing online adventure games. You know, like King’s Quest or Zork, except that for some reason there are no save files, so they have to play them in these 16-hour marathon sessions. So what does this have to do with the war against terrorism?

Gradually, oh so gradually, the teens hack their way into what they think is a game called Terminal Entry. It’s actually the software that coordinates all of the terrorist hit squads, but they don’t know it. So when the terrorist lead is killed, the kids unwittingly take over his cause by “playing” the game and helping to destroy America. They actually get a ton of people killed, I must emphasize.

Yeah, “ignorance” isn’t going to hold up well in the inevitable court proceedings.

Terminal Entry is head scratching for being two tonally different boring movies that are linked by a video game. The military anti-terrorism stuff stretches on and on despite having only enough budget for a single van, jeep, and about four guys (one of whom is an engineer from Alien). And then you have a much more light-hearted teen hacker fantasy where girls throw themselves at guys who can show them online text adventures.

The teen stuff seems like it’s setting itself up for a goofball romp, but it’s never that funny and takes way too long (like 55 minutes!) to get to the actual game. And that’s over too soon, leaving us with a weird siege sequence where a kid uses the computer to mess with the oncoming terrorist attackers.

And that’s a shame, because there’s a glimmer of potential here. Teen hackers unwittingly doing untold damage — and then putting out a hit on their own friends just to win a “game” — could’ve been explored in much greater depth had this film not taken so very long to get to it. If Terminal Entry had accelerated the plot, given some better personality to the kids, and had more fun with it, I could’ve seen this being something. It’s not horrible, but boy did it need a better screen writer — which is ironic, because this was penned by The Sandlot director David Mickey Evans.

Intermission!

• OK that’s a pretty cool title card
• Hope you like shots of power lines, ’cause you’re going to get your fill here
• Hey, it’s Vasquez Rocks
• What was that super-cheap star wipe transition?
• All the cool jocks eat Twinkies while ogling women
• RANDOM MASKED CHAINSAW GUY ATTACK
• There’s no way a computer could animate a photorealistic woman in 1987
• He had to spend three hours to hack in to play an adventure game?
• “Suicide hit squads on American soil” sounds like a job for TEENS!
• The guy in charge of the military is a fat neckbeard in a t-shirt
• Remember Shasta cola?
• “Why don’t you just kiss me and shut me up, OK?”
• Those are some seriously blue shoes
• She’s a genius for saying “pull the trigger?”
• Everyone loves a teen who plays a harmonica in a convertible
• “Howie, this term is ‘hacker!'”
• “Jack London” is code named for going pee outside (call of the wild, baby)
• If you host a cookout, you have to have the largest, floppiest chef’s hat ever made
• Did that Twinkie just hack the mainframe?
• THE BOB RAP
• She’s got seriously white shoes.
• “Use my gun but your bullets.” “That’s strange!”
• “That’s not fair.” “Life isn’t fair.” “You’re not fair!”
• The army likes to tie up reporters with rope in their HQs
• Is it nighttime or noon during the warehouse attack? This movie can’t decide!
• “You’re supposed to ask me if you want to rub my neck.” This guy is so dense.
• “I put us on the hit list.”
• They kill “thousands” of people with the game and do “billions” of dollars of damage, sending the country into martial law
• Yes, kids armed with knives can fend off tons of terrorists with automatic rifles
• Well those karate moves got your lights knocked out
• The cast talking over the end credits