Debra Clinger

The sprawling city of Los Angeles is the game board as five outrageous teams of college students attempt to win 'The Great All-Nighter,' a dusk-to-dawn competition dreamed up by an eccentric graduate student. David Naughton and Stephen Furst are aired with a bizarre, grab-bag group of fellow students including Michael J. Fox in his first movie appearance, equally determined to win the game by collecting various clues planted around the city. As darkness approaches, the teams gather...and the Midnight Madness begins!

The crux of this limited, juvenile comedy is a complex game that begins at midnight and ends by morning. Of main interest is the fact that a young Michael J. Fox plays one of the students involved in the game. Leon (Alan Solomon) has spent a year creating the game and practically needs that long to convince his fellow students to play it. Eventually he wins out, and the various teams of classic stereotypes -- the nerd, the well-groomed hero, the obnoxious sorority sister, the easily duped freshman, and others -- all converge on Los Angeles at midnight. Their treks take them through the Griffith Observatory which because of those odd hours astronomers keep, could conceivably be open. Other locales are interestingly open too, apparently Los Angeles never sleeps.