Review of Firestarter (1984) by Jeremy F — 17 Jul 2008

That heartless BASTARD.... Barrymore's film "father" just hails a taxi and requests the airport. The penniless driver says he cannot afford the gas for that distance, so said dad hands the starving individual one dollar, then convinces him telepathically it's $500 bucks! ...back in 1984!!

WHAT THE HELL?! Why didn't he just trick a few banks out of real money, instead of hitting a poor guy where it hurts AND bringing someone's hopes up before driving them to the ground?

The lead character has lost any potential sympathy, so I stopped watching and just moved on...

(Usually though I've caught this Stephen King book desecrating mockery of a movie on television somewhere around the middle to ending of it, and there's this old man that "only a naive little girl could trust" because he has- *GASP* ...an eye-patch on!).

Alright. *sigh* Apparently, the law or FBI found out about this dude and his small daughter's special psychic powers, (even though he could simply have hid the fact that they even exist with his mind) and he has this limitation on using his powerful brain manipulation only a select number of times. (guy will get minor bloody nose when doing mind tricks, so he's afraid of doing too many at once and what ...bleeding to death?) An interesting bit of trivia for this movie is that Martin Sheen gets to play yet another novel's villain! (other time being in Dead Zone).

Okay sometime earlier, despite the best efforts of douche-bag dad, the government finally gets ahold of Drew Barrymore then persuades her to set a bunch of random objects on fire at their private military base, to merely test her abilities. Then after about a few hundred thousand dollars worth of supplies and equipment are one-by-one destroyed ablaze, they come to the conclusion that she can SET THINGS ON FIRE, (wow, I didn't really see that one coming) but then they still persist to hold her and run more tests.

All the while, little girl is asking to see her frickin' father and they're like "Not yet... You need to set more things on fire!" So finally, right about the time they've got her burning water, the midget gets fed up with captivity and I forget, (the idiots actually have her demolish materials their own building's constructed from) goes on this killing spree or whatever... It's pretty good, so go ahead and watch this if you're just looking to put another film under your belt.