Young Tom is a shy, dreamy boy (not much unlike the kid from Neverending Story) with a cute female friend, a quirky older scientist friend (think Back to the Future a bit, though perhaps not as zany as Christopher Lloyd), and an absolute inability to pay attention to class. At first he takes a lot of comfort in imagining himself as a David against the world's Goliath (sometimes the class bully, sometimes just the world itself), but doesn't really get to live out his fantasies until an accident is turned into a serendipitous recovery by his scientist friend, who gives him a drug that is supposed to increase cognizant abilities.
Unfortunately for Tom, the drug doesn't come with an ethics increase, so he is simultaneously taken advantage of by the local mobster, Bill Rosha, and begins to alienate his true friends while having to deal with the mass of attention he gets as Israel's new child prodigy. As the drug begins to wear out he finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble, until soon he has to find a way to fix things back up, this time without the help of his special powers.
This movie is a pretty good children's movie all around, one where action and adventure keeps the story moving with colorful characters to enjoy, whereas there's not really any true danger present and nobody really gets harmed. I think it would have made a very successful movie had it not been a foreign film, since children have difficulty reading subtitles so fast and adults tend to take their foreign film tastes to more "mature" fare (who cares, this movie's fun anyway...). I'm not that keen on anyone remaking this, but if there's are versions out there with dubbed dialog, I'd recommend it to pretty much any family. It's that kind of fun-loving, adventurous story with a moral about accepting yourself values at the end that anyone can enjoy.
--PolarisDiB
Unfortunately for Tom, the drug doesn't come with an ethics increase, so he is simultaneously taken advantage of by the local mobster, Bill Rosha, and begins to alienate his true friends while having to deal with the mass of attention he gets as Israel's new child prodigy. As the drug begins to wear out he finds himself in deeper and deeper trouble, until soon he has to find a way to fix things back up, this time without the help of his special powers.
This movie is a pretty good children's movie all around, one where action and adventure keeps the story moving with colorful characters to enjoy, whereas there's not really any true danger present and nobody really gets harmed. I think it would have made a very successful movie had it not been a foreign film, since children have difficulty reading subtitles so fast and adults tend to take their foreign film tastes to more "mature" fare (who cares, this movie's fun anyway...). I'm not that keen on anyone remaking this, but if there's are versions out there with dubbed dialog, I'd recommend it to pretty much any family. It's that kind of fun-loving, adventurous story with a moral about accepting yourself values at the end that anyone can enjoy.
--PolarisDiB
