Weird Science (film)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the film. For the TV show based on the film, see Weird Science (TV series). For other uses, see Weird Science.
 This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (February 2009)
Weird Science

Theatrical release poster
Directed by John Hughes
Produced by Joel Silver
Written by John Hughes
Starring Anthony Michael Hall
Kelly LeBrock
Ilan Mitchell-Smith
Bill Paxton
Music by Ira Newborn
Jimmy Iovine
Cinematography Matthew F. Leonetti
Editing by Chris Lebenzon
Mark Warner
Distributed by Universal Pictures
Release date(s) August 2, 1985
Running time 94 minutes
Country United States
Language English

Weird Science is a 1985 American teen film written and directed by John Hughes and starring Anthony Michael Hall, Kelly LeBrock, and Ilan Mitchell-Smith. The film's producer Joel Silver acquired film rights to the pre-Comics Code Authority 1950s EC Comics magazine Weird Science, from which the plot is developed as an expansion and modernization of the basic premise in Al Feldstein's story "Made of the Future" in the fifth issue. The title song was written and performed by American New Wave band Oingo Boingo.

Contents

[edit] Plot

Gary Wallace (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt Donnelly (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) are average, disenfranchised teenagers with low social standing at their Shermer, Illinois high school. In the opening scene we see them being pantsed in front of a gymnasium full of beautiful girls. Frustrated they can't score with real girls, they hack into a government computer to create their dream woman based on the data of, among other sources, various photomodels, Albert Einstein and David Lee Roth. The result is Lisa (Kelly LeBrock), a beautiful and intelligent young woman with superhuman powers which include animation, memory manipulation, reality warping, teleportation, time manipulation, and weather manipulation; although she's clearly out of Gary's and Wyatt's league, she's still unswervingly loyal to them.

Lisa immediately sets about helping Gary and Wyatt gain self confidence and popularity. The three of them take a trip to a bar for a night of drinking and then return home where they encounter Wyatt's older, domineering brother Chet (Bill Paxton) who uses the situation as an opportunity to blackmail Wyatt. At the local mall, Gary and Wyatt encounter two bullies, Ian (Robert Downey, Jr.) and Max (Robert Rusler), who embarrass Gary and Wyatt by dumping an Icee drink onto them. This upsets Deb (Suzanne Snyder) and Hilly (Judie Aronson), Max and Ian's girlfriends. To boost Gary and Wyatt's appeal, Lisa appears to magically summon a "new" Porsche 928 for Gary and invites Max and Ian to a party at Wyatt's house.

Lisa and Gary visit Gary's parents, Al (Britt Leach) and Lucy, (Barbara Lang) who are taken aback by Lisa's forceful personality and her presumptions that they are not properly raising their son. As Gary readies to be grounded, Lisa brandishes a gun, forcing the Wallaces to let Gary go, and then she partially wipes his parent's memory of the incident. Al seems to want to completely forget who Gary is while his mother tries in vain to refresh her husbands' memory. Lisa reveals to Gary that her gun is a squirt gun but only she seems to be amused by the joke.

At the Donnelly house, the party is a blast of uncontrolled teenage anarchy, prompting Gary and Wyatt to lock themselves in the bathroom out of nervousness, only to be encountered there by Deb and Hilly. The boys determine quickly that they must try to have a good time if only to impress the girls. Max and Ian talk with Lisa about the circumstances of her relationship with Gary and Wyatt. They apologize for the Icee incident and end up talking the boys into replicating the process of creating Lisa so they can have girls for themselves. Unfortunately, this only irritates Lisa and the experiment instead conjures up a Pershing medium-range ballistic missile which causes some bizarre circumstances to plague the party. Wyatt's grandparents pay a visit and Lisa freezes them and puts them in the cupboard and the entire kitchen becomes a blue-walled room resembling an ER.

To test Gary and Wyatt's courage, Lisa creates a group of mutant bikers to rampage the party, but instead of fighting, the boys hide out. Finally, in a show of bravado, Gary confronts the bikers, wielding the gun that Lisa showed him earlier. He and Wyatt face down the bikers and send them all packing, but to their shock the gun is no longer a water pistol and it actually goes off, doing further damage. In the aftermath of the destruction Hilly and Deb fall for Wyatt and Gary and each couple ends up falling asleep together.

The following morning, Wyatt's bullying brother Chet returns home from hunting and sees the mass destruction of the house and snow falling in his bedroom. He uses a shotgun to threaten all four of the teens with blackmail. He later sees his grandparents frozen in the cupboard. Lisa, revealing herself to Chet for the first time, orders Gary and Wyatt to take their new friends home, while she deals with Chet.

On the way, Gary barely avoids getting arrested for speeding and his parents see him, (though his father still pretends not to know who he is) Both Gary and Wyatt verbally express their interest in the girls they are with, and each girl reciprocates. Upon returning home, their sports cars vanish and they find that Chet has been transformed into a squat, green, grotesque toad-like creature who eats flies. Lisa is also now aware that Gary and Wyatt have finally found girls their own age whom they love and who will love them back. In a teary goodbye, Lisa's departure begins to 'undo' the damage from the previous night's chaos and Chet returns to "normal". Everything returns to its proper place just in time for Wyatt's parents return.

In an epilogue, the male students in a high school gymnasium react with stunned silence as they are introduced to a substitute gym teacher who turns out to be Lisa dressed in in a very revealing tight gym uniform and sneakers; she requests that they "Drop and give me twenty." to which the boys in the class all pass out. Lisa's eyes turn to the camera, and she winks.

[edit] Cast

[edit] Reception

The movie is rated at 53 percent on the movie review website Rotten Tomatoes[1].

[edit] TV series

Main article: Weird Science (TV series)

A television show based on the film debuted in 1994 and ran for 88 episodes. Following the same basic plot as the movie it starred Vanessa Angel as Lisa, Michael Manasseri as Wyatt, John Mallory Asher as Gary, and Lee Tergesen as Chet.

[edit] Soundtrack

  1. "Weird Science" – Oingo Boingo
  2. "Turn It On" – Kim Wilde
  3. "Deep in the Jungle" – Wall of Voodoo
  4. "Tubular Bells" – Mike Oldfield
  5. "Tesla Girls" – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
  6. "Private Joy" – Cheyne
  7. "Wanted Man" – Ratt
  8. "Don't Worry Baby" – Los Lobos
  9. "Forever" – Taxxi
  10. "Method to My Madness" – The Lords of the New Church
  11. "Eighties" – Killing Joke
  12. "Why Don't Pretty Girls Look at Me" – Wild Man from Wonga
  13. "Nervous and Shakey" – The Del Fuegos
  14. "The Circle" – Max Carl
  15. "Tenderness" – General Public
  16. "Do Not Disturb (Knock Knock)" – The Broken Homes
  17. "Oh, Pretty Woman" – Van Halen

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/1023316-weird_science/

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weird_Science_(film)"