Weird Science

Weird Science

1985

Director: John Hughes

Writer: John Hughes

94 Minutes

John Hughes might be the most missed man in Hollywood or at least the most missed man to the Breakfast Club generation. Hughes made being a teenager fun, exciting, and adventurous when it was none of the above.

Weird Science was every fourteen-year-old boy’s dream.

Playing on their computer, Gary (Anthony Michael Hall) and Wyatt (Ilan Mitchell-Smith) decide to create a girl using Wyatt’s pre-internet computer, lots of power, and a Barbie doll.

Intro: Lisa (Kelly LeBrock).

Lisa represents the ultra-female personality having sex, intelligence, and style. She wore seductive clothes, spoke confidently, and had any man she never wanted. Yet, her loyalty was to the boys that created her. She threw parties, made friends, and stopped an oppressive brother, Chet (Bill Paxton), by turning him into a pile of shit.

What’s not the love about a movie that turns Bill Paxton into a pile of shit?

In the scene above, Lisa has taken the boys out for a night on the town. They end up at the Kandy Room, an urban nightclub, where Gary and Wyatt are about as comfortable as sandpaper on the toilet seat.

But, this is there bar mitzvah – their rite of passage. They have never been out, nor ever been seen with a beautiful woman. Now, they have both. And a ton of alcohol.

They sit a table full of grown men with dark pasts. This is their table, their club, and their rules. One of the soulful-voiced men hands Gary a bottle and says, “drink it.” Gary refuses.

“DRINK IT!” Gary must.

When the men ask Lisa about the boys, she explains it’s purely sexual. Obviously, these boys are up to the challenge of pleasing even the most gorgeous and erotic woman.

“She’s into malakas, Dino,” explains Gary. The room accepts these two as equals, though the movie is about these two accepting themselves and standing up for who they are. This outing is the start.

The group gets comfortable and Gary begins to tell a story about how he went crazy over this 8th grader with big old titties who kneed him in the nuts (family jewels) and called him a fagot in front of everyone.

Gary drunkenly claims, “broke my heart in two.”

“Broke more than your heart,” the soulful voice replies.

But, Gary has Lisa now. And Gary and Wyatt will get a lot more by the end credits.

Weird Science, more importantly John Hughes, treated teenagers with respect. They were not lost individuals trying to cause problems or nerds playing on the computer. They were people who had to face their own problems, issues, and complications, even when adults are too caught up in their own lives to recognize it. In these movies, teenagers were human.

And Mr. Hughes captured that all too well.