Review of Firestarter (1984) by Mitchell B — 06 Sep 2014

Firestarter is the adaption of the Stephen King novel of the same name. Firestarter is pretty much a mixed bag. Most people hate this film including Stephen King himself. While I do not hate the film as much as most people I do think it is one of the weaker Stephen King movie adaptions that I have seen. It has some good stuff in it, but an equal amount of bad things to offset it.

The film starts off nicely. You have Andrew (David Keith) and his daughter Charlie (Drew Barrymore) on the run from this top secret government group called The Shop. The Shop is headed by Captain Hollister (Martin Sheen) and John Rainbird (George C. Scott) Andrew underwent an experiment done by the Shop where he took a special drug which gives you psychic powers of some kind. In Andrew's case he can force people to do what he wants. His daughter Charlie obtained a gift of her own through the genes called Pyro-Kinesis which allows her to produce fire with a thought.

The first half hour of those two on the run I actually enjoyed. The final act was also engaging. She learns to control her abilities, escapes the facility and kills all the agents in the process.

However, the middle portion of the film is where things fall apart for me. After a certain point, Andrew and Charlie are apprehended by The Shop. After that you have nearly forty minutes of them trying to befriend Charlie in order to get her to use her ability for them. They also experiment on Andrew and give him medication. It is literally forty minutes of them being experimented on. I found it incredible boring and unneeded. Most of it just seemed like time filler.

Many of the performances did nothing for me as well. Some of the cast does alright. David Keith and Martin Sheen do a good job most of the time, though Martin Sheen can be very over-the-top in places. Drew Barrymore was not good at all. She did grow as an actor thankfully. I've seen some other films of hers and she is a fine actress. However, she did not do a good job here. George C. Scott I did not think did that well either.

The film has many good things in it. The beginning and the end were fun to watch. The score is good especially the music played at the end. The effects are a bit dated, but are fine overall. However the acting is not that good. Plus the middle is pretty dull. I have not read the entire book, so I cannot comment if it was faithful to the source material or not. From what I have read, they did not change too much, but I have not read that much of it.

Overall, Firestarter is one of the weaker Stephen King adaptions that I've seen. I would skip it. The book is most likely better.