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Fresh and Exciting

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Had the Internet existed when this movie was made, I'd have expected the writers hastily read over a Wikipedia article on how to build a nuke, never bothered to actually make note of the details (since they couldn't understand them anyway) and didn't bother to research the effects of the intense radiation pure plutonium would be giving off, nor its incredible toxicity to biological life. They also didn't bother looking up government policy or even trying to craft a plausible ending. Not only were the characters being lost in the Idiot Ballpit, I think the movie's creators managed to infect themselves with their creation's idiocy. Nothing at all in the movie is remotely believable, as quite a few other reviewers have noted as well.I'd find "The Goonies" more believable than this nonsense, because at least that movie doesn't have the gall to pretend it's scientifically-based.

"The Manhattan Project" is a fairly entertaining movie, so long as you keep it out from under a microscope. Still, those holes are inescapable. Like how did Paul get the resources to fashion a nuclear lab? More than that, how would a high-schooler know how to handle radioactive materials? Can' really sweep that under the "he's a bright kid" rug; we're talking about resources (or maybe it's completely plausible; hell, I'm not a whiz kid). And didn't any Medatomics personnel notice that four-week-old hole in the wall? Putting that all aside, I kinda like this movie. Mostly because I'm a Lithgow fan, and the big bomb defusal scene packs some suspense. But also for superficial reasons, like Cynthia Nixon's house. And the locations, there's some pretty scenery here.6/10

Scientist John Mathewson (John Lithgow) has improve the purity of plutonium. The military sends him to Ithaca to perfect the process. He likes his real estate agent Elizabeth Stephens (Jill Eikenberry) and tries to befriend her son Paul (Christopher Collet) by showing him around the lab. Paul is a smart inventive teenager who decides to steal some plutonium and make a nuclear bomb for his science fair project. Jenny Anderman (Cynthia Nixon) is the girl and the friend.This has a bit of WarGames but the lead kid doesn't have the charm of Matthew Broderick. Of course who has the charm of Ferris Bueller. The lead is a teen brat stereotype without the funny sensibility. It spends too much time with montages and slow action. It also makes the mistake of concentrating a bit too much time on the adults. John Lithgow is such a great star that this mistake is understandable. As in many of these 80s caper movies, there is a lot of unreal unbelievability but one must accept such things. The movie struggles mostly with the pompous teen. He is a spoiled teen without any of the comedy. However it is fun to imagine a teen building a nuclear bomb, and defusing the bomb in the end is kinda exciting.

I don't even wanna talk about it, I just wanna cut it down and leave it for dead. Or with other words, don't watch it unless you wanna make fun of it later! It's a half lame movie for little kids who haven't had a physics class yet and who's parents are willing to explain that something like that is never possible in real life. Here are some examples why (to get you started)The material being so highly concentrated I would imagine when he opens the hatch to get the jar out he'd immediately lose consciousness and die within minutes. No yellow rubber gloves are gonna protect him from the radiation.It looks like he's going for an implosion design with his bomb (like the Nagasaki bomb). That's really "smart". Especially since the gun design (Hiroshima bomb) is far easier to build, but maybe he is aware that the implosion design will have a far greater efficiency so he can incinerate far more people with it, if that's what he wants? (That's where another thought occurs: Why is he complaining about the morality of the lab when he builds a bomb of his own?) Then there is more unprotected working with the material. Even if the material was only slightly radioactive for some reason, his nice fluffy hair would have fallen out halfway through building his device. At the least we would have seen lots of vomiting! To sum it up, tired of writing this as I am, it's just all horrible anyway! I can't understand why a movie with that name couldn't have been a bit more interesting, realistic and possibly talk about the real Manhattan Project instead!