YA: Your Athenaeum

New to the Providence Athenaeum’s YA corner is another entry in the “Brat Pack” movie collection, Weird Science. From Roger Ebert’s 1985 review:

“Weird Science” combines two great traditions in popular entertainment: Inflamed male teenage fantasies and Frankenstein’s monster. Then it crosses them with a new myth, that of the teenage computer geniuses who lock themselves in their bedrooms, hunch over their computer keyboards and write pro grams that can change the universe.

In the movie’s opening scenes, a couple of bright guys write a program with their specifications for a perfect woman. They feed in centerfolds and magazine covers, measurements and parameters. Then, for additional brainpower, they tap into a giant government computer. And at exactly that instant, lightning strikes (just as it did in “The Bride of Frankenstein”), and out of the mix of bytes and kilowatts steps … a perfect woman.

She is played by Kelly LeBrock in the movie and she has full, sensuous lips, a throaty English accent and a lot of style. She is a little more than the boys had bargained on. For one thing, she isn’t an idealized Playmate, all staples and no brains, but an intelligent, sensitive woman who sees right through these teenagers and tries to do them some good.

That’s why “Weird Science” is funnier, and a little deeper, than the predictable story it might have been. The movie is the third success in a row for John Hughes, a writer and director who specializes in films about how teenagers really talk and think.