leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (08/08/85)
WEIRD SCIENCE
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: The worst theatrical film I've seen this summer is a
montage of stupid jokes which has a home computer creating a 22-year-old
sexpot who teaches two young clods how to go out and get girls. Pander,
pander, pander.
Back in the 1950's, science fiction filmmakers discovered a new force,
atomic energy, which they claimed could do all sorts of interesting things.
It could make people and animals grow to incredible sizes or shrink or
become indestructible. Whatever kind of weird fantasy they wanted to get on
the screen, they could explain it with atomic energy. Luckily, we are out
of that phase. Filmwriters now use computers instead. Logic does not have
to apply as long as there is a computer present. The worst example to date,
and the worst film I have seen in a theater this summer, is WEIRD SCIENCE.
The story deals with two 15-year-old high school misfits--add 30 I.Q.
points and they'd be nerds--who build a simulation of a girl on their home
computer. They feed it pictures of what they want her to look like (I can't
feed pictures to MY home computer) and it creates a real three-dimensional
girl. (Well, you can do anything with computers, can't you?) Much of this
garbage plotting could be overlooked if once they got through this premise
they did something reasonable with it. They didn't. The computer
simulation (who looks like a 22-year-old sexpot) sets out to teach the boys
how to get girls and have sex. There is about a half-hour's worth of bad
plot to follow, and it is padded out to feature length with a series of
stupid non sequitur scenes. In one scene, the boys go to a black bar and
win over the patrons by talking jive, drinking whiskey, and smoking cigars.
Yes, they do. In another scene, we see the boys waking up the next morning.
We see one boy's feet sticking out from under the covers, but lo and behold,
his head turns out to be at that end of the bed and he's just balanced his
shoes on the pillow. Lots of big laughs like that. Also lots of really
funny vomit and flatulence jokes. Whoopee.
John Hughes both wrote and directed this film, so the screenwriter got
the director he deserved (and vice versa). Even beyond the basic premise,
there are giant holes in the logic. Lisa (the sexpot) has all sorts of
knowledge that there is no way she could have. She is able to manipulate
matter in impossible ways; she can even "cloud men's minds." This is a low
-2 film burrowing its way to -3 (on the -4 to +4 scale).
Mark R. Leeper
...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeperran@bentley.UUCP (RA Novo) (08/09/85)
*** Spoiler ahead if you didn't see the movie *** *** If you saw the movie, it wouldn't be much of a spoiler now, would it?*** > WEIRD SCIENCE > A film review by Mark R. Leeper > >Lisa (the sexpot) has all sorts of >knowledge that there is no way she could have. She is able to manipulate >matter in impossible ways; she can even "cloud men's minds." When the boys programmed the computer to create her, they fed in pictures of Albert Einstein for her intelligence component, and pictures of David Lee Roth for her personality traits, in addition to many Playboy centerfolds for her physical characteristics. This makes it obvious how she can manipulate peoples minds, of course! I've always been wondering, why can't Van Halen just feed in lots of data to a computer like this about David Lee Roth and just create a replacement for him. > > Mark R. Leeper > ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper > > -- Robert A. Novo "Captain! They put creatures AT&T Bell Labs in our ears! They made us say Piscataway, NJ things that weren't true!" ...bentley!ran
leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (08/19/85)
>> WEIRD SCIENCE >> A film review by Mark R. Leeper >> >>Lisa (the sexpot) has all sorts of knowledge that there is no >>way she could have. She is able to manipulate matter in >>impossible ways; she can even "cloud men's minds." > >When the boys programmed the computer to create her, they fed in >pictures of Albert Einstein for her intelligence component, and >pictures of David Lee Roth for her personality traits, in addition to >many Playboy centerfolds for her physical characteristics. This makes >it obvious how she can manipulate peoples minds, of course! Huh? Are you telling me that all of Einstein's knowledge was printed somewhere on his face? There is more to being a genius than knowing what Einstein looked like! Mark Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper