One of the pleasures of working with Blazing Minds is being asked to review new movies before release, and often before anyone else has seen them. This has led me to watch such a huge variety of films. This is the second documentary I have reviewed, and it’s very different from the last one. When I was asked to do this one and told it was about the ZX Spectrum computer, I agreed, but in my heart I was not expecting it to be something I would enjoy.
Happily, I was wrong. Having grown up in the era of the Spectrum, when the passion and enthusiasm for the computer was at its height, this entire documentary ticked so many nostalgia boxes my brain was simply buzzing at times.
I am going to say upfront that this is not a documentary for the casual viewer. The average moviegoer is not going to sit down and watch two hours of tech nerds talking about the life and times of Sir Clive Sinclair and his most famous, and useful, invention. However, the target audience for this will absolutely love it.
This is a genuine love letter to a man who took risks and basically started an entire computer revolution that led to an earthshaking change within the gaming industry, which to all intents and purposes the ZX Spectrum started. Seeing a lot of people who worked with Sinclair, along with tech journalists like Jason Bradbury, gush over such an important time in the world of computers, while still recognising flaws within the system, was simply wonderful.
From a personal viewpoint I sat watching this consistently saying “Ooh, I remember that” and “That game was brilliant!!”. Documentaries don’t usually elicit that kind of reaction from me, so I think I was probably part of the intended audience, someone who lived through it with a partial passion for tech and a love of the games it inspired. One of the games mentioned a few times was Manic Miner, and I still play it to this day, some 40 years later. It tells you just how iconic the games of the time were, despite their relative simplicity compared to modern games.
Overall, this is a really solid documentary made by, and featuring, people that have a real passion for the subject. Whether they be people who worked on it, people who run collections/museums or tech journalists, they all clearly had endless enthusiasm for this project. If you lived through the early 80s, or you’re a general tech history nerd then you should probably really enjoy this. Given the limited scope of the audience, I can only really give this a 3.5/5, but if you get the chance to check it out then you should…
A blast from the techie past!
Movie title: The Rubber-Keyed Wonder (2024)
Movie description: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. This film goes into all the finer details of how and why the ZX Spectrum was created, what impact the computer had as well as the various versions
Date published: October 3, 2024
Country: UK
Duration: 2h 24m
Director(s): Anthony Caulfield
Genre: Documentary
