Rocky Horror Picture Show (Review)

I absolutely could not stick this classic science fiction film with the three in my other post. Rocky is one of those classics that gets better with age. I say this as someone who has never seen it in a theater in all its participatory glory. I've only seen in on a TV screen, albeit in the company of my dear husband who is a fanatic and who sings along and shouts all the right answers at all the right moments. And now that younger son has seen it in participatory fashion, he can join in the fun.

Rocky is, at its heart, a musical tribute to all the classic science fiction movies of the 1950s and 1960s with a few horror and detective movies thrown in. It is not for the faint of heart or the prudish. The story is recounted matter-of-factly by a criminologist, with the action starting as he begins to recount his tale. After watching the wedding of two of their friends, our hero (Brad, played by Barry Bostwick) and heroine (Janet, played by Susan Sarandon) depart to visit the professor in whose class they first met. Their car breaks down on a deserted road and, to get out of the rain, they end up in the castle of Dr. Frankenfurter (played by Tim Curry) who appears to be having a party of some sort. After that, as my sons would say, hilarity ensues. Strange hilarity. Bizarre hilarity ... with get-up-and-dance-or-at-least-sing-along music. To describe it in detail would not do it justice.

One day, I may just have to see this in its cinematic, participatory goodness, but until then I'll continue to enjoy it on DVD, seeing something new or having a new bizarre thought each time I watch it.

Real Genius (Review)

This is another movie that purists might not call “science fiction,” but since, as with Transformers, it’s listed under that genre in the Internet Movie Database, I’m counting it for the 42 Challenge. My two sons, one of whom had already seen this, put it in the Netflix queue, and it didn’t take long for me to know why. Highly intelligent young men; lasers; pranks, hijinks and MIT-style hacks—what was there not to like?

In terms of plot, a university professor is using his undergraduate geniuses (one of whom is played by a much younger Val Kilmer) to do the work on a laser project that a secret arm of the government is funding for use in a weapons system. The students don’t know what the research will be used for, but when, with the help of a former student who dropped out in his own unique way, they find out, they fight back in the way they know best, by re-engineering the system to … well, it’s a quite worthy hack.

According to my atomic physicist son, much of the laser research presented in this movie is dead on. In other words, what sounds like jargon really does mean something if you speak that language. The premise of the laser as used in the weapons system stretches things, but I was assured that much of the rest was valid.

Was this movie deeply thought-provoking? No. Was it fun? Heck, yes! I've already told my nuclear physicist husband (who arrives home from a workshop late tonight) that he's watching this with me tomorrow.

Transformers—The 2007 Movie (Review)

There was debate at my house as to whether this counted as “science fiction.” The two resident young males argued that it didn't, but since the Internet Movie Database lists Sci-Fi in the list of genre, I’m counting Transformers for the 42 Challenge. The 42 Challenge is to read, watch, or listen to, and then review 42 science-fiction-related items in the 42 weeks and 42 days between the official start date of January 1, 2009, and the official end date of December 3, 2009. However, since Becky, the challenge’s host, has graciously invited unofficial starts at any time after joining the challenge, I’m starting now.

We got Transformers via Netflix, and the familial reaction to it was perhaps best summed up by my husband’s comment early the next morning as he left the house to get the newspapers from the road. “I’ll put this in the mailbox myself to make darn sure it leaves the house.” Yeah, it was that bad, but then the standards for science and science fiction are pretty high when dad is a nuclear physicist, elder son is finishing his master’s in atomic physics, and younger son is whizzing through an undergraduate math major. I’m not exactly ignorant myself when it comes to science, and can only say that my memories of the animated Transformers movie are more positive than what I thought of this live-action take on the same world.

Just as in the animated Transformers world, the live-action world hinged on the good-guy Autobots versus the bad-guy Decepticons. Key to the story is an astral cube that had been frozen in the Arctic along with, as it turns out, head Decepticon Megatron. An explorer stumbled on them, and ended up with important information imprinted on the eyeglasses he was wearing. Fast forward decades later, and one of the explorer’s descendants (played by Shia LaBeouf) is trying to sell the glasses on eBay to raise money for a car. As a result, he is being sought by both the Autobots, which find him first, and the Decepticons. The rest of the movie is best summarized with one of the lines my kids often use in telling a story: “And hilarity ensues.”

So as not to trash the movie totally, I will say that it includes a spurt of dialog that we all thought was pretty priceless. Agents of the super-secret government unit Sector 7 knock on the door of the Shia LeBeouf character’s house. Flashing a badge, the head agent identifies himself as being with Sector 7. “Never heard of it,” comments Shia LeBeouf’s father. “Never will,” responds the agent, totally deadpan.

In short, if you’re looking for serious science or science fiction, look elsewhere. If, however, you’re willing to be entertained by how low a movie can stoop or want to compare this to other D (for dreadful) movies, then this might be the way to go.