By: Mordicai

 

The Eighties was the decade of child-empowerment. One couldn’t throw a Madball without hitting a film about kids bucking the system and striking out on their bikes toward unchaperoned adventures. Movies like The Goonies and Explorers played to the every-kid fantasy of taking charge and shaking off the curfews of adult oppression. Kidco is no exception with bumbling grown-ups aplenty and sassy, know-it-all rascals spouting snappy lines. It’s the classic story of Big Government versus small business, of the little guy trying to turn a profit while trying to get his homework done before bedtime.

 

Hatching the plan.

 

You can’t help but like any film that begins with a bunch of precocious scamps hosting a keno racket in the school locker room and shaking down the second graders for lunch money. The principal busts their scheme and young entrepreneur Dickie Cessna is suspended, forcing him to seek alternate investment opportunities. Played masterfully by Scott Schwartz, Dickie resembles a young Alex P. Keaton (sans Young Republicans membership card) with a head full of the secrets of success and a shovelful of lucrative horse manure. He is the archetypal American kid, but while most of his compatriots are squandering their allowances at the video arcade, Dickie is

incorporating, growing his firm’s niche, and fiercely out-maneuvering his competition. That is, until the Tax Man cometh…

 

Watching this film for the first time in decades, I was immediately struck by the differences between children’s entertainment of the Reagan era and kid’s programming today. These pre-teens swear, toss out crude references and are far edgier than the homogenized Hanna Montana laugh-track shows that are currently cranked out by Disney and Nickelodeon. The crass way these kids interact is far more realistic, from my memory. However, the mild adult content left me wondering if this would even qualify as a kid’s movie today.  Do they have to censor The Bad News Bears when it plays on TV today? Probably.

 

The Competition

 

You will doubtlessly recognize Scott Schwarz from the A Christmas Story and the twisted comedy The Toy, if not for his later porn career.CliftonJames dutifully squints his way through the bad guy role as he had in Cool Hand Luke and as Sheriff J.W. Pepper in Live and Let Die. Of course, no movie of this caliber would be complete without 80’s weirdo on the spot, Vincent Schiavelli in his typical roll as a sleepy-eyed villain. Great casting, smart dialogue, and genuine humor make this a wonderfully weird detour from the average 80’s kid romp. It’s not flashy, but great performances make this a standout.

 

Smart kids in real world situations, Kidco provides us a Hasbro version of Wall Street, a pint-sized model of big 80’s business from the decade of paradigm shifts, leveraged buyouts, and corporate raiding. If nothing else, I wanted to see a sequel - Kidco going public and perhaps taking on the corporate giants. All in all, it’s a kid’s movie with adult sensibilities, and therein resides its charm. Kidco is a shameless nostalgia vehicle me; I harkened back to the time my friends and I found that dead body by the railroad tracks, and when that Russian sailor washed ashore… And just like real life, it ends with a freeze-frame high five. You really can’t ask for more.

 

 

Rating: 3/5 Shovels of Manure

 

 

 

 

 

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