Weird Science

What’s it about?
Two dweebs Frankestein up themselves a real, live Kelly LeBrock and then inexplicably fail to fuck her brains out because it’s a PG-13 John Hughes movie from 1985.

Any chicks in the movie?
The big-haired LeBrock, who can’t act for shit but at least really knows how to rock an overbite, plus Dude Movie specialists Suzanne “Killer Klowns From Outer Space” Snyder and Judie “American Ninja” Aronson as the boys’ non-mojo’ed love interests.*

Awesomeness Factor?
Weird Science isn’t a so much a movie as it is some sort of frustrating cinematic cock-tease. While the basic conceit of two teenage nerdlingers baking a Kelly LeBrock-shaped magic sex muffin by feeding pictures of Albert Einstein and Playboy centerfolds into their Memotech MTX512 seems like a recipe for hilarious hijinkery, Hughes doesn’t bother to explain her magic movie powers, so really she’s just a big sexual deus ex machina with David Lee Roth hair. (Truly, it’s a fine line between mysterious and retarded.) But as an exercise in 80s teen-movie anthropology, Weird Science is bursting at the seams with enough material to fuel a sociology course, queasily lurching from geek wish fufillment (hot mama pops your cherry, computers can break the laws of physics and give you magic powers, your teenage crush falls in love with you) to supposedly knee-slapping scenes of casual racism and sexy pedophilia. Sadly, the nerds themselves are so genuinely irritating you spend most of the movie waiting for them to get their heads kicked in which, unaccountably, never happens. On the plus side the movie has a bewildering cast of Dude Movie icons: archetype hipster douchebag Robert Downey Jr., mutant party-crashing biker Michael “The Hills Have Eyes” Berryman, and the scenery-chewing awesomeness of Bill Paxton as Dweeb #1’s bullying older brother. They should have made a movie with those three instead.

Mitigated By?
Weird Science mercifully put the brakes to Anthony Michael Hall’s career, thereby saving us from another decade or so of Canadian-girlfriend in-jokes.

* Oh my God, wait until you get to the inevitable party scene** – their 80s “hot” teenage chick outfits defy my ability to properly describe them. They doll poor Snyder up like a cross between Siouxie Sioux and Janice from Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem.

** Killing Joke! Christ I’m old.