The Kid With X-Ray Eyes (1999)

The Kid With X-Ray Eyes (1999)

Directed by: Fred Olen Ray

Starring: Justin Berfield, Robert Carradine, Diane Salinger

“Hey guys, I’ve figured it out! We can make any movie into a new kid’s movie if we just make the protagonist a kid instead of an adult! IT’S BRILLIANT! What? No, of course we don’t actually have to watch the movie we’re stealing from, do I look like I watch movies?”

The older brother from Malcolm in the Middle finds a pair of cheap plastic welding goggles one day, and– wait, no, those were x-ray glasses. My bad. Anyway, he finds these x-ray glasses which work, not like actual x-rays, but like how x-rays work in those comic book advertisements for x-ray glasses. Unfortunately, some no-goodnik crooks are after the googles for use in their devilish schemes (like… seeing through a safe or something. I dunno, I think they just wanted to look at people’s underwear, too). Will the kid and his cool beach bum uncle be able to beat the bad guys? Of course they do, and they do it in standard Home Alone fashion, in compliance with section 15B, paragraph 7 of the Homogeneous Family Film Act.

There are parts where the kid is using the goggles and we get to see it from his perspective… that whoever he’s looking at is a goofy plastic skeleton. It’s such a cheap, cartoony effect, but it was actually the part I liked the most about the film. I mean, yeah, might as well go all out as to how ridiculous this concept is, right? I don’t know if that’s how THEY approached it, but that’s how I’m going to PRETEND they did.