"Why are you messing with the fantasy? We know about the reality. Don't ruin the fantasy, okay?"
Weird Science is about as genuinely weird as it gets. It, like the film's Lisa, is comprised of a variety of pieces; a bit of Pygmalion, James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein, Howard Hawks' "too hot to handle" chaotic screwball (cranked to 11), Mary Poppins, Cinderella, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery Animal House-style frat comedy, and the film's namesake; EC Comics' Weird Science, with inspiration from Al Feldstein's story, Made of the Future. It is clearly a film of many inspirations.
And how they gel together is one of the film's strengths; in another exhibition of John Hughes' steadfast tonal control, Weird Science's high-wire acts do not overwhelm the movie, instead steadily working its way to the cartoon-like escapades of Lisa (a name meaning "God's Promise," which I can't help but feel is relevant to the story arc) and her time with Gary Wallace and Wyatt Donnelly throughout the narrative.
And make no mistake, it is Lisa's film. To quote Gary, "Lisa could have a good time at an insurance seminar, Wyatt." From the moment she shows up, in spite of her male gaze-driven introduction, it's she who holds power over our horny adolescent leads. Yes, they created her, yes, she is loyal to them and only them, "belonging to them". These things are quite true. But over the course of the film, the power dynamic shifts from a place of possession to a place of mutual caring; she starts to serve as--as Alexandra Heller-Nichols put it in her essay "Electric Venus; or, How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Weird Science"--a Fairy Godmother of sorts to two immature teens and teaches them to become men, not only sexually but emotionally.
This is not to take away from the performances of Anthony Michael Hall (in his third and final performance in a Hughes picture) and Ilan Douglas-Smith, who work off of each other with nervous, displaced energy as ostracized dorks who yearn to fuck when what they need most is tender, honest love. Something which Lisa ultimately grants them, allowing them the strength and courage to give said love to themselves and other women, defying the form of toxic masculinity found in the forms of Ian & Max (Robert Downey Jr. in an early role and Robert Rusler, respectively), and Wyatt's older brother, Chet; characters who objectify women both as bodies of desire and as less-than-equals.
Of course, it's not as though the film is the most socially conscious, nor did it ever intend to be. To quote a friend, "it's an 80s boob comedy", featuring a then-25 year old woman having sex (off-screen) with a couple of 15 year olds, a gag featuring a young woman being stripped totally naked and hurled into a lake by the vortex of creation spurred by Wyatt's computer that created Lisa, and a scene where, while working up the nerve to talk to the girls they like, they peek out to find that two portly young ladies have taken their place, framed as undesirable. It is, as expected from Hughes, ever sympathetic to young middle-class American youth, quite sophomoric and intentionally so. Which is lovely, in a sense, for a young, horny audience but leaves some sour tastes post-film.
In the end though, in spite of some of the film's genuinely problematic lapses of bad judgement (Anthony Michael Hall speaking jive is... memorable, to say the very least), John Hughes' Weird Science is a fun, good-hearted coming-of-age screwball picture, serving as a subversion (albeit, a slight one) of 80's frat house films that were popular at the time, underscored by a genuinely fantastical air of imagination that pushes the film past others like it at the time.
- The Songbird
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