Thursday, January 15, 2015

The Man with Two Brains (1983)

Director: Carl Reiner

Writers: Steve Martin, Carl Reiner, George Gipe

Composer: Joel Goldsmith

Starring: Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, David Warner, Paul Benedict, Richard Brestoff, James Cromwell, George Furth, Peter Hobbs, Earl Boen, Sissy Spacek, Merv Griffin

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Steve Martin Is A World Famous Surgeon. He Invented Screw Top, Zip Lock Brain Surgery. Trust Him.

Plot: A scheming woman only marries for money and her latest catch is a revered brain surgeon. He is driven to distraction as she endlessly pleads a headache whenever he gets amorous - though this doesn't seem to stop her with other men. On a trip to Vienna, city of the elevator serial killer, the doctor visits a laboratory and strikes up an odd friendship with something - or someone - he finds there. The result is that as he grows increasingly suspicious of his stunning wife, he develops a meaningful - but of necessity platonic - relationship with a bottled brain.



My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again? Yes.

OMFG.  I haven't seen this in thirty years and I'd completely forgotten how damn funny it was.  It's absurdly funny and everyone in it is hilarious.  Steve Martin?  It goes without saying that he's comically talented as shit but David Warner?  I've never seen him sillier and he pulls it off beautifully.  Kathleen Turner?  Yeah, I've seen her in some comedies but she had me laughing out loud.  Her timing and pratfalls are priceless.  Sissy Spacek is the voice of the brain and her delivery is funny as shit.  I don't think I've seen (or heard) her in a comedy like this before.  It's outrageous.  The gags are silly as shit but some of them are so left field they had me seriously laughing out loud.  The one thing I would have changed is Joel Goldsmith's (son of Jerry) synthesizer score.  It sounds cheap.  It could have been a budgetary issue to go electronic.  I loved the ending when you find out who the serial killer is.  "Somebody get that cat out of here!" "You can turn off the subtitles now."  Classic.  Now where the fuck is a widescreen DVD of this thing?  The Warner Bros. DVD is from the early days of the format and it's fullscreen with no extras.  Bastards.

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