Weird Science

Year: 1985
Directed By: John Hughes
Written By: John Hughes

RYAN’S REVIEW

One of my favorite things to do over the past ten years was stroll around the movie sections of stores and find older movies that I just had to have in our collection.  I have always been a specific shopper when it comes to this, I don’t buy just anything I buy the movies that were significant in one way or another.  Either they were significant to me personally or they were just a great movie that was worth owning.  These days when I stroll through the movie aisles in stores I only find myself walking away disappointed.  First of all, the sections stores reserve for movies are shrinking at a regular rate as demand for DVDs and even Blu-rays are dropping all the time.  Secondly, it’s just such a challenge these days to even find a movie I want.  At this point I own nearly every movie I ever loved and all the new releases are much too expensive to purchase when they are first released and for several months after.  I’m saying all this to simply explain how this movie came into my possession. I was reaching, that’s all it really amounts to.  I just really wanted to buy a movie and remembered this one well enough to pick it up for a cheap price.  To say it simply, this was a swing and a miss.  I bought this movie and it’s mine now but if I could go back in time I would simply keep my five bucks, this was not even close to worth that.

When I first saw this movie I was in high school and I think that is why I remembered it fondly.  The idea of creating a woman that will look incredible and do anything and everything you want is an idea that appeals to any teenage boy whether you have succeeded in getting any or not.  Does anything matter more to a teenage boy than trying to score with a chick? It’s something that dominates the mind of us of all through that rough stretch of adolescents where it seems like something that is all but impossible to achieve.  I watched this movie then and thought it was awesome and also watched the TV show with the smoking hot Vanessa Angel and thought that was awesome too.  Having had an opportunity to revisit this movie now, all I can say is that my thoughts and feelings about the film were far too influenced by the raging and uncontrollable hormones that hit young men in their mid to late teens.

I wasted a night of my life watching this movie again and I will never get that time back.  I feel compelled to apologize to my wife for making her sit through the beginning, even though she slept through most of it.  This movie is not good; it’s not even on a level below good.  It’s stupid, plain and simple.  The movie doesn’t even seem to have any direction as it progresses.  It goes from bad to pointless to simply being a complete and utter waste of time. Of course it is harder to watch a movie like this today given that we know computers don’t have the capability of creating supermodel looking women or anything animate at all for that matter.  The thoughts and feelings of these teenage boys and the problems they have may be timeless and something any generation can relate to but that isn’t enough.  This is a ridiculous movie and there is nothing in it that can make it worth any of your time.

John Hughes made many great movies throughout his career but this was not one of them.  It is funny to see a really young Robert Downey Jr. in the film with a crazy hair style that can only belong to the 80s but you can just Google a picture of that and save yourself some time.  Anthony Michael Hall is one of our main characters again doing another movie with his biggest supporter in Hughes.  Kelly LeBrock looks great but having spent a lot of time growing up watching Vanessa Angel play the same role I don’t think much of LeBrock. Bill Paxton is only worth mentioning because he is turned into a giant pile of shit but this is probably a movie he doesn’t include in his resumé.

So let me do you a favor and spare you the time you yourself could waste on this movie, it’s not worth it.  I am literally feeling a lot of guilt because I talked my wife into watching it with me.  In any marriage you can’t afford for things to go this wrong when you persuade your spouse to do something they aren’t really interested in.  All it does is give all the leverage to them and make it harder the next time you try to talk them into something later on down the road.  Damn you Weird Science! My wife will win the next argument over what movie we will watch and it’s all because I was stupid enough to think there was something to this one.  Cool song, but nothing else to speak of with this one.