tek's rating: ½

Genius, on Disney Channel
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This first aired in 1999, but I didn't see it until 2024. It wasn't even on my radar as something I wanted to watch, until I happened to come across it on Disney+, and I decided I might as well give it a try. And... it was okay.

So, there's this kid (I've seen conflicting information on different websites about his age, but it seems to be about 12 or 13) named Charlie Boyle, who is a genius specializing in physics. He's also a big fan of hockey, but the other kids won't let him play with them. Anyway, he gets accepted into several prestigious colleges, and chooses one whose faculty includes a professor whose work he admires, Dr. Krickstein. Charlie also has to teach some classes at the university he's now attending. Unfortunately, the school's hockey team, the Northern Lights, doesn't like Krickstein, whose lab is directly below the ice rink, which cools his particle accelerator. Apparently, the lab was going to be shut down, until Charlie came to the school, so they blame him for the lab's continuing operation. Which... doesn't really seem to make sense, because it didn't seem to me like the lab was doing them any harm (at least not until later in the film). And some of the hockey players, the main one being a guy named Mike, are students in one of the classes Charlie teaches.

One day, Charlie meets a figure skater his age named Claire (Emmy Rossum), who he immediately takes a liking to. But he assumes she wouldn't like him, since no other kids do. So he makes up the name Chaz Anthony, and assumes a totally different personality. He also enrolls himself at Claire's junior high school, where he passes himself off as a "cool kid" and class clown (modeling himself after Mike), and makes some new friends, Odie and Deion. Of course, it's rather complicated having to go between the two different schools without anyone discovering his secret. And things get even more complicated when he learns that Claire's father is the Northern Lights' coach.

Beyond that, I guess I don't want to spoil any of the plot. It's a reasonably amusing movie, though the science aspects are rather unbelievable. And I really don't know what else to say.


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