It's amazing what you can do while you're studying for your chemistry exam. Take young Paul, for example. Seeing his mother's getting pally with a nuclear scientist and recognising bottles of plutonium during a tour on which the scientist generously takes him, Paul decides to break into the lab, steal some and make his own atomic bomb. Well, this is America, so you can at least believe it if you take a heavy swallow. Although overlong, the film is a neat enough comedy-thriller offshoot of War Games, with (thank goodness) a personable quartet of portrayals from mighty John Lithgow (the scientist), Christopher Collet (the boy), Jill Eikenberry (his mother) and Cynthia Nixon (his - rather mature - girlfriend). Some tension is generated towards the end, although not about the bomb itself, which we know won't explode in a film of this nature. The four-letter word which gave the film a 'grown up' rating is presumably to keep sub-teens from getting similar ideas.


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