The Wizard is a 1989 movie starring Fred Savage, Christian Slater, and Beau Bridges.

Corey (Savage) lives with his father (Bridges) and his older brother (Slater). His younger brother, Jimmy, lives with Corey's mother and her new husband. Jimmy has some sort of learning disability — presumably autism, but this is never explicitly stated. Jimmy's mother has become frustrated with his treatment, so she decides to put him in a care facility. Corey decides to run away with Jimmy, and they set off for California with very little money and no idea how to get there.

Along the way, they meet Haley (played by Jenny Lewis), another runaway, and discover that Jimmy has an incredible talent for video games when he scores 50,000 points at Double Dragon. (In actuality, a score of 50,000 in that game is not terribly impressive.) Together, Corey, Jimmy, and Haley head for a video game tournament in California, while being pursued by Putnam (a bounty hunter), and their family. They also have a run in with Lucas Barton, who owns all 97 NES games. He tries to put the moves on Haley with his Power Glove, but Corey puts a stop to that.

The movie features footage from many classic NES games, but this footage contains many factual errors. It also features a "preview" of sorts for Super Mario Bros. 3, which was to be released the following year. Though critically panned, it remains popular among video game fans.

Trivia

• In Europe, this movie was retitled Joystick Heroes. It is available on DVD in Germany.
• Many people have blasted this movie for the scene where Sam plays Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, as he says he was on level three but they cut to him on the first level. However, what these people didn’t notice was that Sam said he "almost beat MecaTurtle", so it's possible he might've died and started over.
• Although part of this movie is set in Utah, none of it was actually shot there.
• While Super Mario Bros. 3 became the best selling game of all time, the Power Glove failed to sell.
• The catering service used for the movie was Mario's Catering.
• The word "Nintendo" is only spoken twice in the movie.
• Additional help was needed to synchronize the film (which moved at 24 frames per second) and the games (which moved at 60 fields/30 frames per second).
• Nick Woods notes that his father's casserole "cannot possibly belong to one of the four major food groups."

External links

• The Original Wizard Website
• Petition - Get the Wizard on SE DVD NOW! - A petition to get the movie on special edition DVD.