YMMV / The Wizard

• Broken Aesop: The reason Haley's family is poor is that her mother was a gambling addict - so naturally the kids use Jimmy's gaming abilities and her own knowledge of craps to gamble their way to California.
• Common Knowledge: The movie is frequently derided for being nothing more than a 90-minute Nintendo advertisement disguised as a feature film. While this is true on some level, it only really turns into a full on sales pitch at the tournament scene. For the remainder of the movie, video games actually take a back seat for the most part, and a lot of the times the viewer can't see what games are being played, with a large chunk of the seen ones never even being mentioned by name. In fact, the first game doesn't appear until almost twenty minutes into the film's run time. The creators of the movie have even gone on record saying this was not their intention when they originally pitched the idea.
• Cult Classic: Trashed by critics upon release and didn't do much at the box office, the film nonetheless has a sizable fanbase of people (especially Nintendo fans), many who caught the film growing up either on video or on TV who cherish it as a nostalgic adventure. There have even been reunion screenings with the cast and filmmakers and recreations of the Video Armageddon tournament featured in the film.
• Designated Hero: Haley is supposed to be justified in falsely accusing Putnam of touching her breast, because he's a jerk and the kids needed to escape from him. This is despite the fact that this accusation could potentially ruin his life and nothing he had done had been bad enough to justify that.
• Designated Villain: The villain of this movie is a horrible, greedy, opportunistic asshole who is literally the finder of lost children.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lucas Barton has become the best-remembered and most popular aspect of the film.
  • The emcee of Video Armageddon, one wild and crazy host. Not on the same extent as Lucas, but in his own way, he's someone you just can't ignore.
• Ham and Cheese: Basically every actor in the film is clearly having a riot acting through this vaguely disguised Nintendo commercial and the result is pure 90s greatness. Special mention goes to Lucas, Putnam, and the Video Armageddon Host.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Corey's response to Lucas' infamous "Power Glove" line: "Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her [Haley], pal, huh?" is now this since Jackey Vinson (the actor who played Lucas) has been convicted of child molestation.
• Just Here for Godzilla: As The Angry Video Game Nerd points out, do you think anyone would care about anything in the film that isn't related to Super Mario Bros. 3?
  AVGN: So, yeah, that's all great, but do you think any 9-year old gave two fuckin' shits about the plot of this movie? I know I didn't!
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "I love the Power Glove. It's so bad." ^ExplanationThe film's most earnest moment of product placement, made funnier by a combination of how saying "bad" to mean "good" stopped being a thing by the end of the 90s, and that the Power Glove very quickly became known for being the other kind of bad.
  • "California..." ^Explanation The Wizard's saccharinely delivered catchphrase.
  • "You got 50,000 in Double Dragon?!" ^Explanation The Wizard gets a game-completion level score within two minutes of playing the game. Notably, this is physically impossible without bug exploits.
  • "HE TOUCHED MY BREAST!" ^Explanation The children randomly accuse the villain of pedophilia to get away from him. Moment is an abrupt escalation in the film's tone, which is otherwise very PG.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • One of Lucas' friends near the end is Tobey Maguire.
  • Fans of indie rock may recognize Rilo Kiley frontwoman Jenny Lewis as Gamer Chick Haley.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: One of the biggest criticisms surrounding the film (other than its constant Product Placement) is that the outline of its plot is remarkably similar to that of Rain Man from the previous year — both films revolve around a neuroatypical savant going on a road trip with his neurotypical brother, who realizes that his unconventional talents can be used to benefit the both of them. The Washington Post outright accused The Wizard of plagiarizing Rain Man when it released, and the similarities between the two films remains a common knock against The Wizard to this day.
• Unintentional Period Piece: It will forever be a symbol of the time when the Nintendo Entertainment System was the dominant force in video games, featuring many of the games that were popular at the time, a scene where the kids call the Nintendo Power hotline for game tips (Nintendo Power ceased publication in late 2012), and the final challenge of the movie being SUPER! MARIO BROS.! 3! A video game that was soon to be released in North America at the time.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: While a lot of Christine's actions are based on the grief over losing her daughter and not knowing how to address her own son's trauma on it either—to be fair, Sam still clearly is avoiding his own grief, her throwing away her marriage and connection to her stepsons as well as putting Jimmy in an institution when he becomes too much to deal with, hiring a shady bounty hunter to bring him back rather than try to work with Sam and Nick to figure out how best to act, hire Putnam only to get back Jimmy and not Corey too and making a big deal of Putnam not being able to return Jimmy sooner, even with her coming around in the end, it's still really hard to like her after all that. While a deleted scene from the trailer has Corey press her to think about what Jimmy wants—and she lets him compete in the finals of the competition as a result—that's still not something shown in the movie itself.
• Values Dissonance: The scene where Haley screams "He touched my breast!". Though it raised some eyebrows even in 1989, treating a false accusation of sexual assault so lightly would not fly at all today, especially not in a children's film. See Instant Family for proof.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The film was definitely made and marketed with Nintendo-loving kids in mind... but the scenes of upsetting family drama, the incestuous Accidental Innuendo in the hotel scene, and Haley's cry of "HE TOUCHED MY BREAST!" make one wonder.

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