Weird Science (1985)

 

Off-List: Weird Science

When I was in eight’s grade, the coolest movie I watched that year was “Weird Science”. For a nerdy teenage boy, this tapped into... everything and we watched it in a computer evening class, no kidding (though it was more a club for gamers than anything else. Gaming here meaning Commodore 64...if you were there, you know). Therefore, how can this movie not be one of my off-List movies for 1985?

Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) and Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) are nerdy teenage boys who dream of girls but are utterly afraid of them. It appears that the only friends they have are each other. Besides being hazed by other boys from the school, Wyatt’s brother, Chet (Bill Paxton), goes out of his way to make life difficult for Wyatt.

While watching “Frankenstein” on the television Gary get the idea that they can make a simulation of a woman on Wyatt’s computer and use it to, well, learn and test out freaky stuff. Soon they are sitting with bras on their heads, feeding the computer information on women while it is hooked up on a mainframe and connected to a doll. At this point something weird happens. They tap into something magic and it works, they have conjured up a real woman, except this is not a normal woman but then super model Kelly LeBrock with magic abilities. Lisa, as they call her, is all at their disposal. Their wildest dream come true, Gary and Wyatt have no idea what to do with it and a number of comical situations ensue. The take a shower with her, go to a blues bar and hang out at the mall. Seeing how incapable the boys are, Lisa gets in action to help out. She invites everybody to a party a Wyatt’s home, including two girls, Deb (Suzanne Snyder) and Hilly (Judie Aronson) whom Gary and Wyatt particularly like.

This of course goes completely off on a tangent. A lot of magic stuff happens as Lisa can make and transform anything and particularly when the boys try to show off by re-doing the experiment, but accidentally conjure up a Pershing II missile instead of a woman... In a climactic scene the house gets invade by doom bikers, upset they were not invited. Will Gary and Wyatt step into character?

This is a magic movie that really requires you to suspend your disbelief. There are a lot of things that do not add up, but none of that matters. It is wacky and nuts, and hilariously funny. Some things unintentionally, as the 1985 version of hacking into a mainframe while other stuff is just insane as the missile or the freezing of Wyatt’s (annoying) grandparents.

At the centre of it, of course, is the two boys who have to get out of their shell. As in most coming-of-age stories, particularly the Hollywood ones, this means they have to stand up for themselves and dominate somebody else, in this case the bikers. Doing that they have now qualified to have girlfriends.

Almost forty years later, “Weird Science” is not as amazing as I thought it was back then, but that would have been a tall order. It is maybe a little too magic and certainly way too cliché, but it is still hilariously fun. I laughed a lot watching it and my son, who is now in eight’s grade totally loved it. That means something. I still love movies about geeks who get the girls and do awesome stuff.

The movie also features a young Robert Downey Jr. as one of the boys hazing Gary and Wyatt. He needs no other introduction.

I really love eighties comedies, and this is one more to the collection.