The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		3.0
Audio		2.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		1.5

The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie Review

It's a bomb.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 30, 2013

In the immortal words of a certain philosopher named Heidi Klum, “One day you’re in, and the next day you’re out”. Mickey Rooney, who is rather incredibly still alive as this review is being written, might be forgiven if he feels his “out” days significantly outnumber his “in” days over the course of his improbably long career. Rooney actually got his start in silents, but during his apprenticeship at Metro Goldwyn Mayer saw his star rise dramatically until he was the top box office draw for three years starting in the late thirties and progressing through the early forties. (Wasn’t there an old Saturday Night Live skit about “Rooney” looking back on these years as if they were yesterday?) But just as quickly as he ascended to the heights, Rooney found himself less and less palatable to the movie going public once he got a bit older (older in this case meaning merely in his twenties), and after a stint in the armed services during World War II and a couple of parting shots at mainstream glory (including a final film with his frequent partner Judy Garland), Rooney struggled to maintain any degree of relevance in the wild and wooly world of show business. Like any good pro, he never admitted he was “out”, and in fact kept working regularly, albeit usually on less than A-list projects. Looking over Rooney’s oeuvre from the 1950s and 1960s, there’s a certain degree of pedestrian sadness about many of his efforts, including at least a couple of failed television series, a highly touted but never realized “showbiz school” he wanted to found (kind of along the lines of Fred Astaire Dance Studios), and some fairly lame motion pictures. Rooney’s personal and professional lives were deeply intertwined during these years, and unfortunately tragedy struck several times affecting both facets of the actor’s life. His 1964 sitcom was edged into cancellation by the suicide of costar Sammee Tong (though it probably wouldn’t have lasted anyway due to low ratings), and a couple of years later his fifth wife Carolyn Mitchell was found dead next to her lover in what was ruled a murder- suicide. The woman who preceded Mitchell as Mrs. Mickey Rooney was one Elaine Devry (billed here as "Elaine Davis – Mrs. Mickey Rooney"), and she is the only female character in the pretty silly 1954 comedy The Atomic Kid, a Rooney produced effort that has whatever limited cachet it has due to being the film that one Marty McFly goes to see in Back to the Future. Based on a story by Blake Edwards (yes, Blake Edwards), The Atomic Kid has little to recommend it other than the window it affords into Rooney’s perhaps desperate attempt to keep working, no matter how ridiculous the project.

One might think that nuclear holocaust might not be the best subject for a goofy, almost childlike, comedy, and in the case of The Atomic Kid, one would be more or less correct, despite some sporadic laughs scattered through this enterprise. Mickey plays lackluster sad sack Blix (does anyone have names like that outside of the movies?), who has been cajoled into looking for uranium by his avaricious best buddy Stan (Robert Strauss in one of his few starring roles). Of course Blix and Stan wander into a Nevada test site where a nuclear bomb is about to go off. Stan manages to avoid the carnage, but Blix, who has found a supply of peanut butter in a test house (full of mannequins), has stayed behind to get some much needed nourishment. Against all odds, Blix actually ends up surviving the test blast and immediately becomes both a media sensation as well as a highly interesting subject for both the FBI and some nasty Commie spies.

Though it’s unclear how much Blake Edwards’ story actually fleshed out the screenplay, there are some relatively Edwards-esque sight gags throughout the film. There are some good moments early on when Blix and Stan get into the test house, thinking they’ve stumbled across a sign of civilization after having been lost in the desert for days, only to completely freak out when they stumble across the mannequins. Earlier, Blix has been complaining of starvation and how all he really needs is a ham sandwich, stumbling off into the desert as Stan, who’s behind him, of course pulls a ham sandwich out of his backpack and takes a gigantic bite. There’s a nice gag worthy of Buster Keaton when Blix is found right after the blast, but that then devolves into the sort of low rent silliness that repeatedly hobbles this film, when it turns out Blix’s “neutrons” have supposedly sped up, resulting in him sounding like Alvin the Chipmunk when he talks. Later, he’s subjected to all sorts of tests at a hospital facility and soon falls head over heels in love with his nurse, Audrey (Elaine Davis).

Playing out against all of this is Stan’s machinations to trade in on Blix’s sudden celebrity, as well as various governmental agencies (both domestic and foreign) trying to get their hands on Blix to figure out how he survived the nuclear blast. A lot of this film plays like a Laurel and Hardy or Abbott and Costello enterprise. Early on, when Stan takes a bite of his hidden sandwich, one could easily see Oliver Hardy doing exactly the same thing. And in the test house, Stan’s slow burn after he gets whacked a couple of times by a blundering Blix could have come out of any Laurel and Hardy enterprise. Stan’s scheming is more in line with the typical “big plans” that Bud Abbott used to bring to any given Abbott and Costello enterprise, while Blix’s innocent naïvete is a near perfect stand in for the wide eyed childlike sensibility of Lou Costello.

Unfortunately the screenplay can’t sustain these parallels for very long, and most of The Atomic Kid is as flat as a test house after a nuclear explosion. Rooney mugs more and more incessantly as the film goes on, probably only too aware that not much else was going to generate substantial laughs. The film’s “logic” (a decidedly relative term) is also all over the place, with Blix’s “special powers” granted courtesy of the explosion veering from lighting up when he’s kissed to repeatedly being able to hit slot machine jackpots on a quick trip to Vegas with Audrey. Blix may have hit the jackpot, but The Atomic Kid is a bust pretty much the whole way.

The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Atomic Kid is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. The elements here have their fair share of damage, perhaps more than might be expected, with quite a few scratches, specks and flecks and even an errant missing frame or two. Once those issues are gotten past, however, the high definition presentation offers reasonable sharpness and clarity, though contrast is on the low side, making some of the interior scenes pretty murky looking (see several of the screenshots accompanying this review for some good examples). The brightly lit sequences fare a good deal better. The film utilizes quite a bit of stock footage, some apparently sourced from 16mm, and as should be expected, those sequences are noticeably softer and grainier than the bulk of this presentation. As with most Olive releases, no restoration, cleaning or sharpening seems to have been applied to this release, so along with the attendant damage comes a healthy layer of grain.

The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Atomic Kid features a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono mix that has some considerable damage to report. The pops, cracks and overt distortion during the Republic Pictures logo is perhaps relatively understandable, but once the actual film starts, there are some pretty major speed fluctuations (and we're not talking about Blix's "Chipmunk speak" here). You'll hear it especially in Van Alexander's (frankly annoying) score, where tonalities shift by as much as a half step as speed increases and decreases within the same cue. Dialogue isn't affected nearly as much by these shifts, but overall this is a fairly lackluster audio presentation.

The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray.

The Atomic Kid Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

One of the most unintentionally funny moments in The Atomic Kid is the use of stock footage clearly showing "tourists" (albeit officially sanctioned ones) just sitting around relaxing in the effulgent glow of a nearby nuclear test. Where we really so completely stupid back in the 1950s? (Don't answer that, I prefer to live on in semi-ignorance.) Unfortunately, nothing in the film is nearly so piquant as that documentary footage. While it's fun to see Strauss in such a major role, Rooney's hamming becomes increasingly annoying as the film goes on, Elaine Davis is definitely not ready for her close-up, and the film just kind of lurches uneasily from silly sequence to silly sequence. This Blu-ray has okay looking video (nothing more, nothing less), but its audio is seriously flawed, at least in places.