The Manhattan Project

Scientist John Mathewson (John Lithgow) has improve the purity of plutonium. The military sends him to Ithaca to perfect the process. He likes his real estate agent Elizabeth Stephens (Jill Eikenberry) and tries to befriend her son Paul (Christopher Collet) by showing him around the lab. Paul is a smart inventive teenager who decides to steal some plutonium and make a nuclear bomb for his science fair project. Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon) is the girl and the friend.

This has a bit of WarGames but the lead kid doesn't have the charm of Matthew Broderick. Of course who has the charm of Ferris Bueller. The lead is a teen brat stereotype without the funny sensibility. It spends too much time with montages and slow action. It also makes the mistake of concentrating a bit too much time on the adults. John Lithgow is such a great star that this mistake is understandable. As in many of these 80s caper movies, there is a lot of unreal unbelievability but one must accept such things. The movie struggles mostly with the pompous teen. He is a spoiled teen without any of the comedy. However it is fun to imagine a teen building a nuclear bomb, and defusing the bomb in the end is kinda exciting.