My Science Project

MOVIE #1,716 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 06.10.24 • VOLUME LXVI • On paper, this is about as good as it gets for a TRUE RANDOM selection in my book: a forgotten mid 80s teen sci-fi comedy, featuring a wasteland Dennis Hopper performance that’s squarely between unhinged and ‘I don’t want to be here’. Helmed by a guy whose only other feature film directorial credit is the puppet dinosaur Whoopi Goldberg flick, Theodore Rex, this also features Fisher Stevens playing off-type as an Italian street tuff from Brooklyn and Pyun favorite John Stockwell in the lead role. This sentence from the top of its Wikipedia page says it all: “It followed on the heels of other teen sci-fi/comedy films released the same year, such as Back to the Future, Real Genius, and Weird Science; it did not perform as well as those films.”

I would normally say they're playing fast and loose with the rules when the entire highschool turns into ground zero for a spacetime-warping event but that would mean the film actually established any rules in the first place (it barely pieces together a coherent plot). Anyway, there are Nazis, ancient warriors, neanderthals, laser gun toting future freaks and a T-Rex that they mow down with machine guns they got off soldiers from ‘Nam before it can chow down on a Fisher Stevens snack…


Now that’s movie magic!

Sure, this makes NO sense but it actually looks pretty great?





There are a bunch of THAT guy actors in wasted, nothing roles, like Richard Masur as the local detective and Barry Corbin as Stockwell’s father, but the ultimate THAT guy is Dennis Hopper. One year before his career resurgence in Blue Velvet, I literally have no idea if this is great or horrendous…


It’s certainly SOMETHING!


The movie ends with a Fisher Stevens outtake reel between the credits…


That's at least one “dyke” and two F-words if you're keeping score of the Fisher Stevens-My Science Project homophobic slurs count. 😬

This is a very bad movie, but there’s enough legitimately cool visuals and off-the-wall performances to make it (vaguely) worth watching. I shall be completing me Jonathan R. Betuel (who also penned the script for a much more beloved and well-known 80s sci-fi, The Last Starfighter) Director Focus soon enough by subjecting myself to Theodore Rex. Stay tuned?

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My Science Project is a 1985 American teen science fiction comedy film directed by Jonathan R. Betuel. It followed on the heels of other teen sci-fi/comedy films released the same year, such as Back to the Future, Real Genius, and Weird Science; it did not perform as well as those films. It was released on August 9, 1985.