Movie Review: The Chocolate War

Back in the day, there was a TV show called “Smallville,” featuring the adventures of a high-school-age Clark Kent (Tom Welling), whose town included an unlimited amount of young outcasts who acquired superpowers out of nowhere and wreaked Carrie-like havoc as a result. An online fan site’s running joke at the time was the lack of security Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) had in his mansion which made zero sense as virtually every week, he was the target of attempted assault, kidnappings and murder, some of which was engineered by his diabolical father (John Glover). In the movie “The Chocolate War,” (based on the young adult novel by Robert Cormier) John plays a priest who teaches at a Catholic all-boys’ school with a similar Machiavellian streak, and the school has a similar lack of security making it handy for the plot which includes many schemes by the students which also involve sneaking around the school after hours.

When the movie begins, Ilan Mitchell-Smith has graduated from wearing panties on his head while he engineers a dream computer girl to trying out for football at said Catholic school, at which, it must be said, he sucks, but he gets the coach to give him a chance anyway. In the bleachers, we then meet two upperclassmen, Wally Ward (who has since changed his name, and who can blame him?), who is the leader of a society called the Vigils, and his sidekick Doug Hutcinson, who decide to provide Ilan with “therapy,” since his mother has recently died and presumably getting creamed at football is not enough. So they insist that Ilan take a bold, unheard of stand and refuse to sell chocolates for the upcoming fund-raiser. The Vigils also make a student nicknamed “Goober” (Corey Gunnestad) loosen all the screws on the desks and chairs in one classroom which gives the teacher a nervous breakdown. But eventually, Ilan decides to take a stand and keep refusing to sell chocolates, even after his “therapy” is officially over. Unsurprisingly, the staff begins to worry that Ilan’s convictions, however artificial initially, could be contagious – and eventually, John meets with Wally to request assistance.

So Wally and his goons exert pressure on Ilan to comply with the program, but the dang kid still refuses, so they then decide to make chocolate selling “cool.” Surely, Ilan will have to give in now, right? But no, so instead the Vigils arrange a boxing match between Ilan and a bruiser (Adam Baldwin), but due to some trickery involving a black marble, Ilan winds up facing off against Wally. The book ending is changed, but in a way that makes sense. And if anyone is still asking the question that was big in the nineties, i.e. “Why are Gen Xers so cynical?” I might reply, “because of books like this in which the system essentially wins.” (See also YA books like “The Pigman” by Paul Zindel.) But it’s an interesting watch, particularly for Yaz fans, anyway.