Weird Science (1985)

🎙️ Ep 1: "Weird Science" – AI Girlfriends, '80s Pimples, and Unexpected Missile Launches 💻👙🚀

In the premiere of So I Married a Millennial, Jeremy introduces Lauren to the gloriously unhinged 1985 John Hughes “classic” Weird Science — a movie about two 15-year-old boys who build a sexy AI genie woman using a computer, a Barbie doll, and absolutely no understanding of how computers work.

Lauren has... questions. Like, Why is Robert Downey Jr. here? Why is the internet a bowling alley? Why does Lisa have godlike powers? And why is everyone okay with the fact that she’s actively grooming children?!

This episode includes:
 🧠 A deep dive into 1980s techno-magic logic
 👾 AI ethics (but make it horny and neon)
 🎭 Robert Downey Jr. without veneers
 💄 A lingerie montage featuring actual children (???)
💥 A surprise missile — because, why not?
🐷 And yes, Bill Paxton turns into a literal turd monster.

💬 Search bait for the SEO gods: #WeirdScience #JohnHughes #80sMovies #AI #PodcastComedy #NostalgiaPod #KellyLeBrock #RobertDowneyJr #TechGoneWrong #SoIMarriedAMillennial

Transcript

I made Lauren watch Weird Science. This is So I Married a Millennial. Hi there and welcome to So I Married a Millennial. 

My name is Jeremy Levy and this is my lovely wife, Lauren Levy, and we are a real-life married couple in case you couldn't figure that out. We are also voice actors. I play Bumblebee on Transformer Cyberverse. 

And I played Acerola on Pokemon Sun and Moon. And we love pop culture. Now we do are both technically millennials. 

Very, very technically. I have told people the title for this podcast and people have given me guff saying that I am an ex-annual and not a millennial. Well, I googled it just the other day and to cover our tracks and we are safe. 

So we're calling ourselves millennials by the letter of the law. And we are totally on opposite sides of the spectrum. I'm as old as you can get. 

Lauren is as young as you can get. And we realised that there were some real gaps in our pop culture knowledge. So we are doing this podcast and every episode I am going to bring to Lauren a staple of my 80s kid coming of age that she has not seen. 

And if all goes to plan, she will suitably cringe and it will make for great digital audio television. That's the plan. That's a good conceit. 

Great. I'm very sold. So today we are doing the 1985 John Hughes classic Weird Science. 

The Rotten Tomatoes official synopsis of this is Rotten Tomatoes says, Teen misfits Gary and Wyatt design their ideal woman on a computer and a freak electrical accident brings her to life in the form of the lovely superhuman Lisa. She outfits Gary and Wyatt in cool clothes, surprises them with a Porsche, and it helps them stand up to jerks Ian and Max. But all the while, the boys must hide Lisa's existence from Chet Wyatt's nightmare of a big brother. 

It has a 60% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 69%, nice, audience score on that same Rotten Tomatoes. Wow. Yeah. 

I, as soon as we started watching this, I immediately understood truly almost immediately why you thought that this was a good one to start out with. It was so bizarre right from the jump. And I, and I feel like it was already not ageing well in the first, in the first seconds of screen time. 

I was like, ah, I, I'm understanding why, why you wanted to start with this particular piece. I 

told, uh, a mutual friend of ours, uh, that I was starting with this as our first episode and he goes, oh my God, you are going to melt. You're going to melt her brain. 

He was like, that thing is a total fever dream. I, and you know, fever dream is a really, really great way to describe. So we read the synopsis. 

We did. Yes. Why don't you take me through your recollection of the plots as, as you saw it? Okay. 

Um, the plot of this is so fascinating. Okay. So we have two, which my first note though, was wow. 

Actually pimply faced teenagers, which was one of my first reactions because that, by the time we got into the early two thousands, no one had pimples. Yeah. I was like, wow. 

At least that we were aware of on, in media. Yes. So I was like, wow. 

So we got, I'm not, I'm not going to lie to you. I actually do not remember which one is Wyatt and which one is whatever. It's Blondie and Brunette. 

That is incredible. Blondie is Gary. Gary, Blondie, Gary. 

And Elon Mitchell Smith is Wyatt. Okay. You got this. 

We got, we got Gary and Wyatt and they are clearly nerds. Yes. So far so good. 

That is, so they, they are nerds. Uh, from the opening, the other thing was me going, oh, is that Robert Downey Jr? That is true. Which, that was shocking. 

Without the junior. I, and that was another note I made. I said, when, when did he change from Robert Downey to Robert Downey Jr? He was, he was just Robert Downey. 

Uh, also no, no veneers. Oh yeah. Old school teeth, which I, which I thought was, was. We had real pimples. We had real teeth. It was, it was going off in the start.
 Yeah. So Wyatt and Gary. Wyatt and Gary. 

Wyatt and Gary are not the coolest kids at school. So they are best friends. Seems like they spend a lot of time in their room and they, honestly, how they decided to build this one, it happened so quickly. 

It was like, as if they'd been like, do you want to go play baseball? And he was like, Hey, do you want to build a woman on the internet? Like that was, and he, the one was like. Yes. It was, it was a very jarring. 

So they were watching Frankenstein. Yes. On TV. 

Yes. But like, what a leap from like, girls won't talk to me. We're watching Frankenstein. 

What a leap of logic to be like, we should create a girl. Correct. Is a real, like, to me, getting from that point A to point B is, is borderline insane. 

But sure, we'll, we'll go with it. And of course, like, he didn't mean, he didn't mean, and he makes a point of saying this, like, he didn't mean like, dig up a body. He wanted to create a computer programme. 

Correct. So we'll give him that. He, sure, in the technical sense, but he, his commitment to the bit immediately was quite impressive. 

Like the one is sort of like, I don't know, man. And then the other one is like, no, this is the best idea we've ever had. And then they just start doing it, which is a pretty crazy. 

Also, I don't think, I don't know if y'all knew how computers work when this came out, but the way the computer sequence was absolutely insane. So they use the computer in a way that computers certainly don't work. And I don't know if people knew that computers didn't work that way. 

I mean, that was like sort of the convention of the 80s was that like, computers were generally not understood by the general public. And they, they could be anything. Like, I think on some level, we like in the 80s, we're like, sure, a computer could do that. 

And computers were like, the ultimate plot device in every 80s movie, because it could be just whatever you wanted. It literally could be anything, which they really took that and ran with it. My other favourite is they cut to the man in the control room. 

Where is the control room? Is this the US government? I've watched this movie probably a hundred times, and I thought that maybe I would better understand that viewing it now. And I don't know. Well, if anything, you actually know too much about computers now to know that that's not how it works. 

Yeah. It's like the guy watching the internet. The guy like in charge of the internet. 

And he's like denied. And then they have to like try to go around it, I guess. But then it's just like weird images and like mazes. 

It's like desktop backgrounds. They're like, oh, we have to go another way through the internet because he hit deny. Absolutely bonkers. 

What that whole sequence is absolutely bonkers. There is a long history that I think still exists today in movies, where people are trying to make computer stuff more visually appealing on screen. That even happens to this day. 

We still see people on apps and computers. The hackers. And we're just like, that is not what 

that looks like at all. 

Clearly, you're trying to make this. And in the 80s, clearly, they went even farther with that. All sort of like computery stuff. 

This is completely bonkers. This, even at that time, was blowing all of that stuff out of the visuals. It's giving the Willy Wonka tunnel scene. 

There's lights. There's weird shit. It was otherworldly. 

There was like a bowling ball, like a strike there's like a skull. It was trippy as all get out. And it was very confusing. 

So that whole thing happens. And we'll talk about that more later, because that was that might have been the craziest part of the whole movie. And there's actually a lot to pick from. 

But that whole sequence is absolutely insane. I mean, the whole concept of computers in this world is beyond crazy. Beyond. 

So all of that. Then the sky is changing. We're having a full meteorological event. 

All of that. And then this beautiful woman named Lisa walks out, which Lisa was a babe. Lisa was absolutely a baby. 

Kelly LeBrock. Kelly LeBrock. And then she just also the power, which I know is one of your biggest pet peeves in anything, though, when you don't know the rules of the world. 

Yeah. Which I guess we're suspending disbelief for this in general. Yeah. 

But then she can just make things appear and then they just decide that they're going to a bar. They're show she's showing them this whole new world. She's opening their eyes and they're both dating her. 

But she definitely likes. One of them. Why? Why? Yeah, she seemed to like Wyatt more. One million percent. But also like so you. So yes. 

So they create her. They create her. And also going back to the computer stuff, something that like you and I, we tried not to talk about. 

We did during the movie so that we could talk about it here. But even like there was a moment looking at you, I was like, what? Well, there was a moment where they were feeding images into into my God, because so initially they make her. Yes. 

And Gary is like, that's it. That's all the computer power that I have. And there is like an image on the screen that says that she has a fifth grade. 

Oh, my God. Reading level. And I think it says the brain brain level. Yeah. And they call her like a boring dipshit. Yeah. 

They said, should we give her a brain? Like they asked, should we give her a brain? Yeah. And then they selected brain level, boring dipshit. That was the actual onscreen. 

I don't think they selected that. I think it was just the amount. I feel like it was the options there was like. 

I think it was the amount of data because this like moves to the point. Is that like. That's why they start feeding things into the scanner. 

Which also I made a note here. This movie was kind of prophetic because it feels a lot like how we are training AI now. Oh, God. 

It was it was kind of the exact. It is like a lot of what was going on in this movie is what is actually happening now. What Gary initially wanted to do. 

He's like, yeah, let's make a girl on the computer. We'll talk to her. We'll ask her stuff. 

He said, we'll do like crazy sex shit with like with her. Ask her about crazy sex shit. That is not unlike what is happening today. 

And and it's also not unlike what's happening today. Gary, at one point, it's like, well, that's all the data that I have that I have to feed her. And Gary is. 

And that's when it said fifth grade level. She's a boring dipshit. We need more. 

And Gary says we need more. We need to tap into the wider Internet. That's why they put the photo of Albert Einstein. 

So they have a scanner, I guess. Is that what scanners do? That's again, that's saying like that's what a scanner does the same way that that's what a computer does. Exactly. 

OK. So they went to get her, get her to be smarter, get her to be more musical. They would scan in images of things. 

Yes. And a lot of playboy photos. Yes. 

A lot of playboy photos. And then Albert Einstein and some music to keep it spicy. Yes. 

So they make her better. You're right. So they they levelled her up from boring dipshit. 

She was she was all that. So and somewhere in the doing of this, we change over from science to just straight up magic. Yes. 

One hundred percent. Like that's when you say like the sky opens up. Yeah. 

And like there's a dog on the ceiling and things get turned upside down. And Gary tries to stop the computer and he tries to like break it with. Yeah. 

With a metal baseball bat. And it smashes the. They unplug it. It's still going. Like. Yeah. 

It says Gary says he goes, it's doing it by itself. It's like like a I like it was a harbinger, babe. Oh, if this is a harbinger for things, we better murder Syria right now, babe. 

I don't want to. I don't want to live there. Babe, it's going to be fine. 

If Kelly LeBrock is there, it's going to be it's going to be totally fine. So they so the magic happens. They make. 

Yeah. They make Kelly LeBrock. Yes. 

And she's Lisa. And she is like she's like a she's like a god. Yeah. 

No, they make they make like a god, a god genie. Yeah. Who is like obsessed with them and is like, yes, both of them, those little 15 year old boys, which also a general note, I feel like we should have made them 16. 

I feel like we should have made them at least 16. Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of weirdness here. 

There's a lot of I feel like we are. I know things were were a little looser in those early 80 days. But wow, I feel like we should have made them 16, especially when she's like in the lingerie store. 

And she's like, do you think this will make a 15 year old boy horny? And it's like, whoa, I mean, how old do we think she was supposed to? Because it was the 80s. So people looked older. Sure. 

I mean, I think that she was supposed to be in like her, like. Like mid early to mid 20s. Yeah. But still the references to them being 15. Oh, yeah. Over and over again.
 Rooming them. Yeah. One hundred percent. 

She is she is the only and the only person that acknowledges that is the old woman at the lingerie shop who is like, what the fuck? She doesn't say what the fuck, but it is. It's implied. What the fuck? I mean, she's the only person who is like, huh? It is. 

It's really it's disturbing. And it's like and it's disturbing on two levels, because on the one hand, she is like, you created me. You control me. 

I am at your mercy. And at the same time, she's like grooming these very vulnerable, sheltered children who do not have the context or emotional maturity for the sexual stuff that she is actually. I got to tell you, it doesn't read well. 

I got I got to tell you, it's it's not it's not reading great. But so Lisa's showing them the world and helping them feel more confident and helping them stand up for themselves. Sure, sure, sure. 

And then she wants them to have a party. And so then she goes to I don't remember which one she went. Oh, she went to what's his name? Gary. 

Gary's parents. Gary's parents. Yeah. 

With a gun, which we do find out is a water gun. But she goes and basically like, well, question marks. We so she goes and basically bullies his parents and then somehow make his parents forget about him. 

She does horrible. I have I have a note in here that like she's kind of a genie. She's kind of a god, but she's also kind of a demon. 

One million percent. Like she puts people's lives in danger. She puts their the guys, the nerds lives in danger. 

She's like she's kind of she's maybe evil. And she you're not really sure if she's like knows how all of this is going to end because you have no idea what the limits to her powers. I don't know that she knows. 

Yeah. Like I don't know that anyone knows. Things just keep happening. 

Yeah. So it's like, did she know that everything was going to work out this way? And she because we like is she a god? Is she standing up to the parents? Was crazy how she came in there being like, I'm taking your 15 year old son to a with sex, drugs and rock and roll like get over it. Yeah. 

And they're naturally like, excuse me. And then she somehow makes them forget the son completely. Yeah. 

Takes him to the party. They have like a huge rager at the house because Gary's parents are out of town. Yeah. 

And then randomly at the party. Well, they get to talk to the girls. That's all. 

We're progressing. The teeny bopper romances who like are the girlfriends of Robert Downey Jr. and other other non stereotypical John Hughes bully guy. Yeah. 

So it's like their girlfriend. But then they're also kind of like, ah, whatever. Like, fuck those girls, which is also kind of bizarre, but OK. 

But so like we're progressing that plot line. It's going well. But then clearly we have to bring some sort of conflict in. 

So it's these like weird, weird science, weird villains who look like they I think are supposed to be scary, but look like they came out of a production of Chicago. I mean, you thought it was scary. Oh, when I was a kid, I probably had nightmares about these characters. 

So. So, yeah. So we so we set up that like so there are the other love interests outside of Lisa who are the bullies, girlfriends who have no character development whatsoever. 

They are just you want to talk about just calling them Blondie and Burnett. That is even more. I want to. 

Like I still I still don't remember their names at all, but they are the object of our desire. They're the goal. They're the things that we are supposed be striving for as an audience. 

Yes. The boys to get. So they that's not good. 

Yeah. So they are like, yes, I mean, it was the 80s. That's that is that's how we thought. 

So they are chickening out and they're not really going for it. And Lisa is trying to cajole them into like being the heroes that these girls will fall for. So she conjures some some real danger, real dangerous bad guys, which is also just crazy. 

That whole like they smash through the windows is I don't think people are actually freaked out enough. Why are you standing? Everyone's just like standing there like, yeah, this is a normal thing to happen at a party. Yeah. 

Like, sure. But then in the overarching of the plot, they basically just tell them to fuck off like is the way that they resolve this conflict. But fuck off is like they use my mouth was actually dropped open by what was said, which we will not repeat on here. 

We will not. Yeah. But we had we had bitch. We had the F slur. Yeah. Which was crazy. 

The liberal use of the F slur. Y'all needed Hillary Duff's 2000s campaign. When you say that, we didn't even have Hillary Duff. 

She was alive, but she wasn't she wasn't cooked yet. But absolutely crazy telling them to just like get out of the house. And they do. 

So like they're they like did it. They stood up. Yay. 

And he's like pointing a gun at them, which also crazy, which we think is the water gun from earlier. Sure. Turns out it's a real gun. 

Was it the same gun? I don't know. Do they know? I don't know. Any anything. 

I mean, I think that's that's part of the the charm, let's say, of this is that anything could be anything. Charm is an interesting word. You need to I mean, like you need to endlessly suspend your disbelief. 

That is fair, because not even in the world of the movie that nothing makes sense. Nothing is consistent. Nothing makes sense. 

Anything could happen. And it's sort of like establishes that. So you can be like, yeah, sure. Fine. Whatever. Sure. 

But there were no rules. But I I was I was struck. There's a real tonal shift at the end when those guys come in, which I get is sort of part of the point. 

I mean, it's trying to raise the stakes. But like that, like one of one of the mutants who I still find extraordinarily scared. Maybe I'm just scarred. 

Maybe some I saw. I find the community theatre Chicago to me watching it again, watching it again. I was I was retraumatized all over again. 

We have different definitions of what scary is, though. And like at one point, one of the guys like like goes to sort of hit one of the members of the party with his arm and the guy ducks and he like smashes a hole in the wall. Like there's some. 

No. Yeah. Like Lisa has gone off of the rails by also like on this one. 

Bringing all of these scary people to a party with like, again, we're saying 15 year olds like these kids shouldn't even be drinking. Like we're talking minors here. And she brings these like full mutant adults in leather that are weirdly also seem part animal. 

That's never explained. Don't know what there's like a panther sound effect. The one woman is on a leash. 

Yeah. Weird things happening. The one guy is giving sloth from the goonies.
 There's a lot going on. Yeah. So those are the bad guys.
 They stand up to them. Everyone is so proud of them. So now they can go get the girls. So they do. And you're like, OK, sure. I guess that happens. 

And then Chet, the brother we haven't really talked about, who is like so over the top, like Chet's the actual Chet is the scariest person in this movie. So they have. So it's Wyatt's older brother, Chet, who is home from college, played by. 

And this and this was a great sort of subsidiary because I was like, hey, that's Bill Paxton, to which you said. Who is Bill Paxton? Yeah. So this is the fun. 

This is this is the fun. Isn't there isn't the girl that played Aquamarine? Is that his daughter? Who is Aquamarine? Oh, my God. You haven't seen Aquamarine? Who is Aquamarine? This is on full display. 

Next episode, we'll be watching Aquamarine. Fabulous movie. I took it upon myself, my darling, to find movies that Bill Paxton was in that you may know. 

Here is a list of movies. You know Bill Paxton, even if you don't know Bill Paxton. Here's I tell you, I'm looking at his face right now. 

OK, I'm not Paxton. Aliens, Titanic. You know, you never saw Titanic. 

No, I only saw the end of Titanic and that you want to talk about you as a child. I just saw the end of Titanic on TV as a kid. I was like, no, no, this movie isn't for me. 

OK, fair enough. Apollo 13, Twister. I know you just saw Twister because you wanted to see the new Twisters. 

He's the main guy in Twister. True Lies, Tombstone, Mighty Joe Young, A Simple Plan. I haven't seen any of these. 

This is great. These are all future episodes. No, I've seen some of them.
 I've seen some of them. I've seen Twisters. Oh, OK.
 This is Twister, but for sure. This is the first one, the first one. It's not Twisters.
 It's just Twister. No, the sequel is Twisters. I thought they were both called Twisters. 

This is why we're doing this. OK, I would like to point out this is informative for both of us. I would like to point out that the girl who is who plays Aquamarine, her name, her last name is Paxton, but no relation to Bill Paxton. 

OK, so that solves the mystery of the that for everyone. Great. But so they get the girls, the brother that is like unbelievably scary and aggressive towards them. 

Yeah. He's I mean, he's a sociopath. Oh, yeah. 

No, he's really scary. He like is pointing the gun like in their faces. It was crazy. 

They also then at the end go to a room where they never mentioned if he has a sister or not. Yeah. Like whose room is that with all the My Little Ponies and things? They never addressed that. 

There's like yeah, there's dolls. Yes, there's dolls in My Little Pony and like snow globes. Yes.
 So that's where I love that. That is the detail that you glommed on to. You're like, wait a second. 

This makes no sense. I was like, that's what you glommed on to. They never mentioned him having a sister. 

Where is the sister? That's fair. Where is the sister? I don't know. She doesn't exist. 

But so they they stand up to Chet to Chet can't boss them around. And Lisa then sort of frees them all so that they can be with girly pop one and two who's age appropriate, who apparently are not with the bad guys at all, like sort of are, but sort of are. They tried to conjure another girl with the bullies. 

Oh, yes. And it didn't work, which was kind of crazy. So at the party at the end, there's this subplot where the bullies want to have sex with Lisa. 

And Lisa's like, no, I belong to Gary and Wyatt. And the bullies, again, Robert Downey Jr. and nondescript 80s villain number seven. So there's this great scene that I love where the bullies who have been horrific the entire movie just sit down very genially with Gary and Wyatt in Wyatt's bedroom and have like a very calm, sort of diplomatic, reasonable conversation that just say, hey, we'll give you our girlfriends. 

You give us Lisa. Yeah. Absolutely wild. 

And I guess they kind of get their comeuppance. And finally, they come clean and they say, hey, listen, can you keep a secret? To which the bullies are like, absolutely. And they tell the story. 

Why would they trust them? But OK. Which they tell the story of how they created Lisa. And then they offer to make a another girl for for the bullies. 

Yes. Because they're trying to capitulate because they're they're still trying to be cool. They're trying. 

They just want people to like them, which is like part of their their story. So they try to recreate the process of making Lisa for the bullies, which like all of this is awful. Yeah. 

Like all of this is just terrible that they're all just creating sex slaves. Yes. One hundred percent for for bullies and whatnot. 

But then they accidentally instead it's on a Life magazine because they didn't have a Barbie doll this time, which again, the Barbie doll. Where did the Barbie doll come from? The nondescript sister's room who doesn't actually exist. Thank you. 

Actually. Yeah, there's a whole subplot about the sister that got cut. Who is she? Where is honestly that might be true. 

I don't know that for a fact, but it's something about nothing. But so then it's on a Life magazine and there's a missile on it. So then they make so then a missile shows up because they forget to hook up the Barbie doll. 

So there's just so it scans again, scans again. It's this. Yeah, it's this logic of like images. 

Sure. All you need is an image of something. And then the computer understands every facet of correct. 

So then they make a missile, which that whole thing was very odd. But basically, then Lisa, it's all worked out. You glossed over this missile that came up through the house. 

Because it's so ridiculous. Like I was like, what is what is happening? So we wrap it all up and then they've got the girls. Chet has been dealt with and is going to be fine. 

And then Lisa magically before she goes away, makes everything in the house go back to normal so that he like the boys don't get in trouble. And that's just the end of that. Oh, and then his dad won't hug him. 

Yes. Which was crazy. There is a hug. 

His dad and his dad is like, yeah, goes for a handshake. There's a real like there's a real comment on on masculinity in the. Oh, yeah. 

Chet's like I wrote it down here at one point the morning after they make Lisa and they have this like wild party out. It's teased that Lisa is going to have sex with Janet. She calls it the gymnastics routine because he fell asleep into the gymnastics routine. 

You know, thank God that when. 

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