JOYSTICKS

“Endearingly insane mashup of anything and everything that was hip with 'the youth' in 1982-83.”
— Liz, LETTERBOXD

For a very brief time in the early 1980s, it seemed like arcades were going to replace churches, movie theaters, and parking lots as the number one destination for teen congregations. Horny and hopped up on hot dogs and sugary colas, they were drawn to the blip-bloop siren call of Ms. Pac-Man, Dig Dug and Burger Time. JOYSTICKS takes this setting and makes it a battlefield in which terrified conservative parents battle high-scoring horn-dogs and rainbow-haired punks go toe-to-toe with beefy slobs for the title of "best of the best." This wild teen comedy is elevated to Olympian heights by its arcade setting, absurd premise, and most of all, a performance by Jon Gries (THE MONSTER SQUAD) as scenery-chewing, button-mashing, punk patriarch King Vidiot.