leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (08/15/85)
MY SCIENCE PROJECT
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: MY SCIENCE PROJECT gets a barely passing grade.
Back around 1960 Disney Studios made a couple of decent fantasy films:
THE SHAGGY DOG and THE ABSENT-MINDED PROFESSOR. After that they hit a
slump, making a series of films that traded off of the popularity of these
films. They were mostly similar in content to these films; some were
sequels. There was some market for these bland films, but Disney's lack of
originality was sowing the seeds of audience contempt for the Disney name.
MY SCIENCE PROJECT is the film that Disney should have made in 1962.
Unfortunately, they did not, and now it is too late. Audiences have higher
expectations from post-STAR WARS fantasy films and MY SCIENCE PROJECT really
does not hack it.
The story is of a high school car lover who is forced to do a science
project. He wants to rebuild the engine of a World War II airplane which he
was going to "borrow" from a local air base. Instead, he gets the engine
from a UFO that the government has been hiding for years. It does weird
things and in the finale--which seems hours into the film--it opens a hole
in the space-time continuum and lets through a Whitman's Sampler of
dangerous humans and animals from other points of space-time.
Back when audiences expected a lot of only vaguely amusing story and
were willing to wait for a fantasy punch at the end, this sort of story
would have cut the mustard. The film has other problems too. The
characters all seem to know why they are doing what they are doing, but
often it is not explained very well to the audience. At one point, the
characters seem to be chasing some electrical something on power wires.
First, it is the slowest thing that ever went over power lines, but even
beyond that, the script never explains what it is they are chasing or what
would happen if they lost the race. Often scenes seem to fail because the
director has no idea how long a scene should take. At one point two
characters have a two-minute conversation while holding up a line of cars.
I can see the line waiting while the grease-monkey repairs the lead car, but
the conversation went on long after he finished.
This film has problems with continuity, logic, and especially pacing.
Rate it a low 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper