Weird Science
1985
Dir: John Hughes (Sixteen Candles; Breakfast Club; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles)
A movie from all of our teenhoods, as it turns out, does not hold up upon adult inspection. The story of two dorks who scientifically engineer a woman who proceeds to make them cool is a fair enough idea. And I am not faulting the film for its surrealism or fantastical nature. Far from it; that is the movie's redeeming quailty. But this film is just a plain mess.
Why exactly do these two kids, who have unlocked the secret to creating the perfect woman, bother with the insipid high schoolers that they had mild crushes on? I mean, I am all over the need to have a socially repsonsible resolution to the story, but please.
One of the things that bugs me most about movie characters is when they fail to learn from their mistakes. All right, Kelly LeBrock is magical, can manipulate time and space and generate matter. And yet, after the fourth or fifth time that she performs a miracle, our heroes are still incredulous. "How did you do that?" Uh, the same way she conjured the ferraria and did all the other stuff. Mad Max types storm the house party, and it is some big test of courage for the dorks to stand up to them. Look, if LeBrock can conjure futuristic Hell's Angels, she can make them go away too; stop acting like you are in any danger!
The story requires that the kids grow from her challanges. But they are so stupid that they don't realize that these are not challenges at all. And they let the magical supermodel take off so they can have a couple of teenage Madonna wannabe's. That is just evil.
The movie, though, is worth watching for Anthony Michael-Hall's "blues man" character, the one chance to let an actor with some actual marginal talent flex his muscles a bit. His counterpart, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, is the worst actor ever.
MAP
Dir: John Hughes (Sixteen Candles; Breakfast Club; Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Planes, Trains, and Automobiles)
A movie from all of our teenhoods, as it turns out, does not hold up upon adult inspection. The story of two dorks who scientifically engineer a woman who proceeds to make them cool is a fair enough idea. And I am not faulting the film for its surrealism or fantastical nature. Far from it; that is the movie's redeeming quailty. But this film is just a plain mess.
Why exactly do these two kids, who have unlocked the secret to creating the perfect woman, bother with the insipid high schoolers that they had mild crushes on? I mean, I am all over the need to have a socially repsonsible resolution to the story, but please.
One of the things that bugs me most about movie characters is when they fail to learn from their mistakes. All right, Kelly LeBrock is magical, can manipulate time and space and generate matter. And yet, after the fourth or fifth time that she performs a miracle, our heroes are still incredulous. "How did you do that?" Uh, the same way she conjured the ferraria and did all the other stuff. Mad Max types storm the house party, and it is some big test of courage for the dorks to stand up to them. Look, if LeBrock can conjure futuristic Hell's Angels, she can make them go away too; stop acting like you are in any danger!
The story requires that the kids grow from her challanges. But they are so stupid that they don't realize that these are not challenges at all. And they let the magical supermodel take off so they can have a couple of teenage Madonna wannabe's. That is just evil.
The movie, though, is worth watching for Anthony Michael-Hall's "blues man" character, the one chance to let an actor with some actual marginal talent flex his muscles a bit. His counterpart, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, is the worst actor ever.
MAP
posted by paroske at 10/25/2005 08:39:00 PM 
1 Comments:
Marcus, you are overlooking Bill Paxton's greatest performance to date.
Game over, man.
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