WarGames

Once more, a wise-guy teenager tries to prove he's smarter than any adult-and nearly destroys the whole world in the process-in WarGames. Computer-game aficionado Matthew Broderick inadverently taps into a hush-hush Pentagon computer, then proceeds to inaugurate his favorite game, "Global ...more

Made at a time when public perception of computers' abilities far exceeded their actual potential, WarGames benefited greatly from the mass confusion inherent in the onset of the home-computing movement. But it's also a relic of its era in other ways as well, tapping into a fresh vein of Cold War anxiety that arrived with the Reagan administration's new concentration on the arms race. As much as the first factor dates it and the second factor may alienate viewers who came of age after the fall ...more