I can imagine that the number of people who will click with Midnight Madness is limited. This is a movie that is drowning in the 80s, and lumps every character into broad stereotypes that are exaggerated to the extreme. Yet it was like a blast of nostalgia for me. The road race with a scavenger hunt idea is a tried and true storytelling device. Some of my favorite TV shows had episodes with this exact plot structure. By and large, that's what Midnight Madness felt like to me, an extended episode of classic 80s television. It didn't hurt my opinion of the film that I recognized virtually every actor from other movies. Of course the most notable is the first film appearance of Michael J. Fox as the "annoying little brother" cliche. It's too bad he looks a little too old for the part, and also is just too likable to be that obnoxious. Despite the heavy-duty wave of nostalgia that I got from Midnight Madness, it certainly wasn't a great film. Almost no one in the movie is a likable character, and that includes the team we're meant to root for, hoping they might succeed. The plotting is also a bit messy as it can often be in movies about scavenger hunts like this one. When everyone is heading to the same destinations at the same time, it doesn't make for a very compelling game. They don't even have to figure out the clues, just follow the one team that does solve them (In fact, several teams skip a stop completely and just catch up later.) They try to make up for the lackluster journey by having wacky things that go on at each location. I struggled to laugh at these antics as my brain kept wanting to focus on the amount of damage they were causing to the different businesses. There are several different things, like the amount of chaos these teams cause everywhere they go, where I figure you're just supposed to turn off your brain and enjoy the ride. Perhaps the most blatant example of that is the fact that Leon has set up a number of things that seem utterly impossible. Perhaps the most blatant of these is the arcade game. Most of the time I was able to just enjoy the silly antics of the film rather than dwelling too much on the nonsense. At times it did feel like the movie was going on a bit long, but I think that mostly came from the fact that I could predict how it was going to end, so I just wanted them to get there. Midnight Madness is far from an amazing film, in fact I don't know if I would ever seek it out again. But there were enough small things that I enjoyed to make it a movie I was glad to see once.
Review of Midnight Madness
