i've never written a review for a movie i haven't watched all the way through , but i had to make an exception with powder . i was about forty-five minutes into this one at a friend's house when he and his brother got into a huge shouting match that would have ended in violence had we not left the house . so i never got to finish the movie and i'm sure as hell not going to pay three more bucks to watch half of <NEG> a bad movie </NEG> . but i can at least get a partial review out of it , because i saw enough to know <NEG> this one wasn't worth finishing in the first place </NEG> . the movie centers around a freaky teenager who's spent his entire life living in the cellar of his grandparents' house . when grandpa dies ( taking his department store down with him ) , social worker mary steenburgen has to take powder ( first and middle names ? gold bond ) to a state home , where we find out he's a different from the other kids . actually , we find out he's different when we first see him , because he's the most pale individual we've ever seen and moreover he has no body hair whatsoever . when powder is born in the opening minutes of the movie , the father takes one look at him and says " he's not my son . " obviously . all i want to know is where the pillsbury dough boy was nine months ago . so the white-faced freak leaves his neverland ranch for the state home and faces the ridicule of other kids . that is , until they try to haze him during his first cafeteria lunch by making him " wear " his spoon ( " you can either wear it on your nose or up your ass . " decisions , decisions . . . ) and he uses telepathic powers to draw all the silverware in the room into a giant pile in the middle of the table . so if his father is the pillsbury dough boy , his mother must be sissy spacek's carrie character . and you have to factor in two more things from the subsequent scenes , as we find out powder has some sort of super-intelligence ( " your i . q . test went straight off the chart ! " ) and attracts electrical power . this first shows up as powder visits the world of high school ( if he's such a genius already , why would he need a high school education ? ) and sits through a demonstration in jeff goldblum's science class . goldblum plugs in a " jacob's ladder " device that shows current running up two wires and immediately the current flows across the room and into powder's chest . but goldblum just stands there for about thirty seconds watching , instead of just unplugging the damn thing . i guess he was too busy contemplating why he was <NEG> appearing in his third bad movie in a row </NEG> ( following hideaway and nine months ) . that's about all i saw before the big fight began and , let me tell you , that was twice as interesting as the movie itself . but like i said , i saw enough to know this would be <NEG> one of those terrible melodramas </NEG> about the isolation of people who have superior abilities and how hard it is for those people to assimilate themselves into mainstream civilization . none of these movies ever handle the subject properly , instead introducing the feeble beauty and the beast copout of having a beautiful woman fall in love with the guy's personality , overlooking his personal appearance . i already had the female character picked out ( the girl who was sitting next to him in the back of the room during the electrocution scene ) , but i guess i'll never know for sure what happened . from noraruth@aol . com mon jun 10 15 : 04 : 03 edt 1996 article : 3654 of rec . arts . movies . reviews path : nntphub . cb . att . com ! not-for-mail from : noraruth@aol . com ( andrew hicks ) newsgroups : rec . arts . movies . reviews , rec . arts . sf . reviews subject : review : powder ( 1995 ) followup-to : rec . arts . movies . current-films , rec . arts . sf . movies date : 10 jun 1996 18 : 16 : 03 gmt organization : university of missouri - columbia lines : 70 sender : ecl@mtcts1 . att . com ( evelyn c . leeper ) approved : ecl@mtcts1 . att . com message-id : " > reply-to : noraruth@aol . com ( andrew hicks ) nntp-posting-host : mtcts2 . mt . lucent . com summary : r . a . m . r . #05425 keywords : author=hicks originator : ecl@mtcts2 xref : nntphub . cb . att . com rec . arts . movies . reviews : 3654 rec . arts . sf . reviews : 710 status : ro powder a film review by andrew hicks copyright 1996 andrew hicks / fatboy productions .
