I Feel (Un)Seen - The Invisible Kid (1988)

 Strap in folks.  We've jumped forward to the '80s and we need to talk about a movie that feels like it was made for TV (and I seriously thought it was) but apparently somehow got a theatrical release.

Hooooooo boy.  Do any of you remember the terrible movie Zapped! from 1982, starring terrible person Scott Baio?  He gets telekinetic powers and just uses them to make women's clothing fly off?  It's creepy and weird and no one comes off well in it.  This is a very slight improvement with a kid named Grover (Jay Underwood, and forget this and see The Boy Who Could Fly instead) trying to replicate his dead father's toilet bowl cleaner and, of course, accidentally creates an invisibility formula.  He has a best friend, Milton who is played by very veteran character actor Wallace Langham and out of respect for his long career I'll use his current picture.

But BOY is he terrible in this.  There's actually good actors trying there best in this mess (which includes a high school basketball point-shaving scandal, a weird cop flirting with the kid's mother (who is, my god, Karen Black as "Mom" and she's doing best with this)) but playing the creepy best friend in a teen comedy is not in Langham's wheelhouse.  

I'll give this movie credit for a couple of things.  Everyone turns invisible at some point. Grover.  Milton.  Mom.  Cindy, the girl next door (played by Chynna Phillips a scant year before Wilson Phillips forms) and even the weird cop and Mom.  Do the undressing scenes take up probably half the movie?  Yes.  Do we get the point in the first one?  Helllllll yes.   (Also, this movie has a weird amount of 1980's nudity as people reappear, because the effect only lasts a certain amount of time.)  And then there's the odd car chase scene before the finale, which has a moment involving a nun carrying a box of free kittens across the street and almost getting hit that I swear is the screenwriter paying tribute to the infamous bomb scene from teh first Batman movie.  Here, let's watch that instead.

Man, that scene rules.  

Look, I don't know what more to say about this.  It's a movie with talented people and every teen movie of the '80s trope possible but it's just not good.  Go watch Better Off Dead instead.