“Joysticks” is a goofy sex comedy from the same era that brought us “Animal House”, “Lemon Popsicle” and “Porky’s”. It combines the raunchy teen antics with arcade gaming so maybe it was trying to cash-in on the success of “Tron” and “WarGames”.

A town’s arcade is apparently the only place to be if you are a youngster as the teens spend all their time and money playing games such as “Pac-Man”. A local businessman (Joe Don Baker “Fletch”, “GoldenEye”) sets his sights on getting the arcade closed for good. Jefferson (Scott McGinnis “Star Trek III: The Search For Spock”), McDorfus and Eugene will stop at nothing to save their arcade so the businessman enlists the help of King Vidiot, the local punk.

The acting in “Joysticks” is downright abysmal. I particularly hated the McDorfus character, who is clearly a rip-off of John Belushi’s Blutarsky from “Animal House”. The Eugene character is the same type of nerd that we have seen in countless movies such as “Meatballs” and “American Graffiti”. The King Vidiot character is pretty dull. Most of the movie is just the teens stood around in the arcade. Poor Joe Don Baker is the only decent actor in this movie.

“Joysticks” is basically just an excuse to show a lot of topless girls and advertise arcade games. The big showdown at the end where Jefferson battles King Vidiot on “Super Pac-Man” is not captivating at all. Most of the gags fall completely flat. If you want a superior movie about playing videogames, I would state that “Tron” is infinitely better. There are also plenty of better teen comedies out there including “Animal House” so do not waste your time with “Joysticks”. The only positive thing that I can really say about this movie is that its not as desperate in its attempts to advertise videogames as “The Wizard”.