POWDER

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STARRING: Mary Steenburgen, Sean Patrick Flanery, Lance Henriksen, Jeff Goldblum, Brandon Smith

1995, 111 Minutes, Directed by: Victor Salva

Description: Fantasy and drama combine in the story of a teenager known as Powder for his snow-white skin. Powder is introduced into a tiny Texas community after spending his entire life in his grandparents' basement. He's a wise genius, but an outcast, alienated by those who misunderstand and fear him. When a schoolmaster (Mary Steenburgen) and science teacher (Jeff Goldblum) discover that Powder has a capacity for empathic insight and possesses the power to control electricity, the unusual boy becomes a tragic Christ-like figure--peaceful, prophetic, and perhaps too good to survive in the real world. — Amazon.com

A teenage boy who seems to have rolled around in the pancake dough (some really bad bald albino make-up) for too long with amazing telekinetic powers related to electricity has to confront the real world outside.

But, alas, it doesn't seem the real world at all. Instead it's one made up of movie clichés and dull-witted plotting. He is rejected and scorned by other people because he looks different (personally I know of quite a few nightclubs where he would have fitted in quite perfectly), he gets harassed incessantly by the local school bullies (even after he does somehow amazing tricks that would have scared anyone with an iota of intelligence away) and it takes all the people quite a while to realize that he is really special after all.

Yup, this is Charly country with a good dose of Phenomena thrown in. The boy is a genius right off the charts (yet that doesn't prevent him from spouting all kinds of Obi Wan Kenobi-like gibberish). Add Jeff Goldblum as the prerequisite scientist who explains everything (the boy is the "Man of the Future" and must have skipped a few steps of Evolution) and some lightening special effects … and what do we have?

A movie which appealed to a lot of teenagers because they were probably feeling just as alienated and misunderstood as the main character in this movie. Teenage angst rules, see . . .