Weird Science

Weird Science
By Peter John Gardner

One of the main differences between Project Downey Jr. and Project Stallone is that with this current project, I'd actually get to watch movies that I like as opposed to direct to video releases that I wouldn't even touch with your credit card, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that Weird Science was next on my list of movies to watch.

RDJ plays one of the school bullies that humiliate our heroes on a daily basis and tries to woo our heroes computer generated dream girl Lisa. It's kinda hard to buy since Downey was still pretty scrawny at this point in his career. When 80s Anthony Michael Hall looks like he could take you in a fight, it's time to hit the gym. Perhaps that was the point of casting RDJ, even a scrawny wimp like him could beat up these two main characters.

For those that didn't grow up in the 80s, Weird Science is a campy teenage comedy written and directed by John Hughes about two nerds that decide to create the perfect woman. They do so by hacking into the mainframe of the Pentagon, wearing bras on their heads, and feeding pictures of swimsuit models and crossword puzzles into a scanner as well as a video clip of David Lee Roth.

Because every guy wants his dream girl to be just like David Lee Roth...?

Anyway, out comes Kelly Lebrock, who didn't even seem like that perfect of a woman back in the 80s, and hijinks ensue as the two nerds use their dream girl to get back at the bullies, an abusive older brother (Bill Paxton!), and try to win the hearts of two "real" girls from their high school.

What is a perfect woman if not something created in the mind of a man himself? No woman is perfect and neither is any man. A relationship is built not only upon a foundation of similarities and common interests between the two, but it also survives off of the way two people handle their partner's differences. If I had a super-computer like the one used by Gary and Wyatt in the film, and I could create what would theoretically be the perfect woman for me, would she actually be perfect? And what about the involuntary servitude inflicted upon Lisa in this film? A lot of men out there probably have wet dreams about that, but I prefer a woman with a mind of her own. One who has just enough similarities shared with me so that we're on the same wavelength, but enough differences that we would actually have stuff to talk and debate about. Overcoming those differences is what makes a healthy relationship.

Now, after reading that last paragraph, one who hasn't seen the film might infer that Lisa is a brainless drone that does whatever the two main characters want, but that's not the case. To her credit (and Gary and Wyatt's for that matter), Lisa is quite intelligent, often pointing the characters in the correct moral direction, and she never sleeps with them. You can't make a perfect companion. The perfect companion is someone that is much like you, but also different. It's like a puzzle. Two pieces that are exactly the same won't fit together, but the two pieces that are curvy and loopy will fill the gaps of the other.