Remote (1993) is Moonbeam Entertainment’s answer to Home Alone. It’s not what we normally think of as “genre” cinema, but it is gimmicky; that’s gotta count for something.
Nathan Shumate is the proprietor of Cold Fusion Video Reviews and the publisher of Cold Fusion Media.
#1 by lyzard on November 5th, 2009
Alex Band was one of the kids in Puppet Master II, wasn’t he? That was only two years before this – I wonder what his contribution was? Maybe he was his father’s “intelligent but awkward junior high student” consultant. (I hope he wasn’t the “pointlessly cruel bully” consultant.)
#2 by Read MacGuirtose on November 5th, 2009
Well, whatever else he might have contributed, according to the IMDb he did play one of the “Bad Boy”s…
#3 by lyzard on November 5th, 2009
Woouuld…that be him on the left? I don’t recognise him without his “Egyptian robes”.
#4 by Nathan Shumate on November 5th, 2009
I think that was indeed Alex Band, but I couldn’t swear to it. (Some expert I turn out to be!)
#5 by lyzard on November 5th, 2009
At least this explains why the LA “bad boys” ain’t so very bad.
#6 by Blake on November 5th, 2009
I like how in this film’s alternate world, he can show off all his remote-controlled stuff and the girl he likes would kiss him, instead of call him a geek or something like that. Nothing like that ever happened to me.
#7 by Nathan Shumate on November 5th, 2009
As a married geek, I have to say that such girls do exist. (Mind you, I didn’t show her my Godzilla collection until after we were married…)
#8 by Blake on November 5th, 2009
Well, you’ve seen my wife (I imagine) so I know they exist…they just didn’t exist when I was in high school.
#9 by Nathan Shumate on November 5th, 2009
That’s okay. The lack of such girls in high school helped us guard our purity. Or something.
#10 by Blake on November 5th, 2009
I had a female friend (a lot of them, actually) that once said, “Blake, why can’t I find a boy like you?” I practically rolled my eyes into the next state when I heard that.
#11 by Nathan Shumate on November 5th, 2009
“You did! ME!!”
#12 by lyzard on November 5th, 2009
The REAL problem here, I feel compelled to point out, is that this relationship dynamic rarely operates in the opposite direction. I know plenty of geeky *guys* with great partners, but…
#13 by Carl on November 5th, 2009
Lyz, I don’t know about Australia. Come to the USA and hundreds of guys will be following you around.
#14 by Nathan Shumate on November 5th, 2009
“Group stalking! It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
#15 by The Rev. D.D. on November 5th, 2009
Blake: Thanks so bloody much for bringing back THOSE particular memories. I actually shuddered. You’re paying for my therapy, bucko.
Geek relationship dynamics: I know many more geeky girls with partners than geeky guys. *shrugs* But yeah, Lyz’d totally be the belle of the ball. She’d have to beat them off with a plastic lightsaber/plastic phaser/plastic what-have-you.
“Come to the USA and hundreds of guys will be following you around.”
This made me think of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog talking to a pretty young girl among the dork legions standing in line for one of those newer Star Wars movies: “Just think…you can choose from all of these men who have no idea how to please you!”
#16 by lyzard on November 6th, 2009
Thanks for the suggestion, but I tried that once and…it didn’t work out so well in practice.
Stupid real world.
#17 by Thomas on November 6th, 2009
If you were suggesting that the geek women tend to get the short end in pairings, rather than arguing that they have trouble finding a date, then you may well be right. I mean, yes, lowering your standards will probably get you a boyfriend, but then you have to face the fact that your partner is kind of unpleasant. Then there’s the whole problem of people who could hold down a relationship quite well, but are pretty much incapable of getting one off the ground to begin with, so you wind-up in situations you’d have avoided if you had the ability to take control of things yourself.
This is all getting very abstract. Did I have a point?
#18 by GalaxyJane on November 6th, 2009
I married my husband because he not only didn’t object when I dragged him out of bed at 2 AM to watch “Plan 9 From Outer Space”, he LIKED it. In retrospect this turns out to probably have NOT been the best way to choose a potential life partner.