The summer of 1985 contained a slew of iconic teens-and-SF movies: THE GOONIES, BACK TO THE FUTURE, WEIRD SCIENCE, REAL GENIUS, etc. There was also MY SCIENCE PROJECT, a product of Disney’s newly minted Touchstone Pictures label that partook, clumsily, of the teen SF model. The directorial debut of Jonathan R. Betuel (who scripted the previous year’s well-received LAST STARFIGHTER), MY SCIENCE PROJECT is interesting enough to suggest that it might have worked with some rewrites and a real director, but it got neither, and so met its inevitable fate.
In Betuel’s defense, he was working for a studio that back then couldn’t seem to do anything right. MY SCIENCE PROJECT followed the 1985 Disney disasters BABY: SECRET OF THE LOST LEGEND, RETURN TO OZ (a good film, yes, but a massive flop) and THE BLACK CAULDRON. Nor did the studio’s subsequent 1985 releases THE JOURNEY OF NATTY GANN and ONE MAGIC CHRISTMAS improve matters, meaning MY SCIENCE PROJECT may not have ranked with THE GOONIES or BACK TO THE FUTURE, but fit right in with its Disney released fellows.
The film begins with a Roswell inspired 1957 UFO crash in New Mexico, a sequence that focuses on President Eisenhower (Robert Beer) being called to an Army base late at night. Faced with an alien spaceship, he demands it be disassembled and the incident hushed up.
Flash forward to 1985, when the car-obsessed high school senior Michael (John Stockwell) is informed by his yippie science teacher Dr. Roberts (Dennis Hopper) that he’ll need to come up with a bang-up science project to pass the class. Roped into taking the nerdy Ellie (Danielle von Zernick) on a date, Michael brings her to an Air Force graveyard where he hopes to find something with which to impress his teacher. He unearths a piece of the crashed UFO, which takes the form of a metallic stump with a glowing globe in its middle, in a bomb shelter.
The gizmo initially demonstrates its powers by causing Michael’s car to abruptly break down. The following day Michael hooks the thing to a car battery in his shop class, causing an ancient Greek vase to materialize and Michael and his punk friend Vince (Fisher Stevens) to travel two hours forward in time. The nerdy Sherman (Raphael Sbarge) introduces Michael and Vince to the concept of time warps, wherein different time periods converge, which would appear to be what’s happening. Next Michael and Vince show the gizmo to Dr. Roberts, who disappears after plugging it into an electric outlet.
This inspires a speeding car race by Michael, Vince and Ellie to blow up a power tower in order to keep the gizmo’s energy surge from spreading. Back home Michael and Vince are arrested, but Sherman hooks the gizmo up to a power outlet and blacks out the town, allowing Michael and Vince to escape from the police station. Sherman’s actions also create a massive time warp inside the high school gymnasium, in which Viet Cong soldiers, mutants, Cleopatra and a massive Tyrannosaurus Rex converge—and Dr. Roberts makes his long-awaited reappearance, proclaiming he’s ensured that “The future’s a groove!”
This is a film that, as stated above, could have been good. The seasoned supporting cast, which includes Barry Corbin, Richard Masur, Anne Wedgeworth and Dennis Hopper, was certainly capable of far better work than is delivered; the sight of Hopper going into an awestruck rant amid flowing lightning coils could have been a highlight, but suffers from weak dialogue. Fisher Stevens, doing his standard 1980s movie shtick as the very punchable goofball sidekick, was also stuck with less-than-prizeworthy lines (including lots of gratuitous movie quotes), while in the lead role John Stockwell (coming off CHRISTINE) barely registers.
Continuing with the could-have-beens: the T-Rex seen in the climax had a talented team involved in its creation (including Brian Tipton, Doug Beswick and an uncredited Rick Baker), and so should have looked far better than it does (and gotten far more screen time). The race to blow up the power tower likewise could have been far better handled, with the director’s attempts at suspense ruined by inconsistent timing and geography (the distance between the surging electricity and the heroes attempting to outrace it is different in every shot), as could the overall tone, which tries for the same air of comedic SF that animated BACK TO THE FUTURE, but fails because, simply, the film is never very funny.
Vital Statistics
MY SCIENCE PROJECT
Touchstone Pictures
Director/Screenplay: Jonathan R. Betuel
Producer: Jonathan Taplin
Cinematography: David M. Walsh
Editing: Carroll Timothy O’Meara
Cast: John Stockwell, Danielle von Zerneck, Fisher Stevens, Raphale Sbarge, Richard Masur, Barry Corbin, Anne Wedgeworth, Dennis Hopper, Candace Silver, Beau Dremann, Pat Simmons, John Vidor, Vincent Barbour, Jamie Alba