TRON: Blacklights and Bullshit

TRON (1982)
Directed by Steven Lisberger
(buy on Amazon, you consumer fuck)
Reviewed by J. Kane
Trip-o-meter: 6 out of 10

Let's start with something easy. Tron is by far, one of the most creative sci-fi films to rise above typical '80s filth and has become some kind of bizarre cult classic. And there's only one way to enjoy it - with your best friend, Mary Jane.
Basic plot? What basic plot? Super nerd boy genius Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) had some computer games plagiarized from him. Instead of getting a lawyer, he tries hacking into the big, evil Master Control Program (what a shitty name. At least call it something like Microsoft). Like some weird precursor to Honey, I Shrunk The Kids, Flynn is sucked into Computerland, where programs have personality, video games are some kind of gladiator battle and weapons are glowy Frisbee things.
For computer animation from 1982, it holds up pretty well. It's nothing special, but at least it's not alarmingly bad. Most of all, it's trippy, if just a little bit. It's not gonna blow your mind, but it'll incite a few "ooh, sooooo pretty" remarks.


It may get on your nerves how bad the dialogue is and how obvious every fucking scene was just shot in a basement filled with blacklights. Also, nothing in this film makes sense. Computers don't run like this, they never have and never will. It's written like a crippled old geezer suffering from Alzheimer's escaped from the local retirement home and made a screenplay on them newfangled computers, something he understood nothing about. If I were to make an action film about the Large Hard-On Collidor, I'd probably do the exact same thing.
One treat is Jeff Bridges trying hard to act like getting sucked into a computer and forced to fight evil "programs" is not some kind of ex-WOW stoner fantasy. He acts like Keanu Reeves ("whoa, dude!") but sometimes says something that gives him a pulse. He was so young and un-Oscar-worthy at the time, too.
At the end of the night, this eye candy will give your corneas a boner, but don't expect to come away enlightened. It definitely falls into the "turn on, tune out" category.