YOUNG EINSTEIN. Directed by Yahoo Serious; written by Yahoo Serious and David Roach; produced by Yahoo Serious, Warwick Ross and David Roach for Warner Bros. Starring Yahoo Serious and Odile Le Clezio. Rated PG.
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Young Einstein is just about as weird a movie as you'd expect, considering it's produced, directed and written by someone named Yahoo Serious.
What's surprising is that it's also funny and entertaining on several levels—one of an unusually large number of "whole family" movies to come out this summer.
It often looks and sounds like an extended rock music video, with some really nifty tunes. There's also plenty of slapstick comedy and crazy situations here to entertain the younger set as well as their teenaged siblings. And for the adults, there are occasional, astonishing, instances of actually subtle humor.
A summary of Young Einstein's plot will give you an idea of how weird it is, but unfortunately won't illustrate any of its more positive features.
Albert (Serious) accidentally discovers how to split atoms while trying to put bubbles into his father's home-brewed beer on an apple farm in Tasmania.
Famous equation in hand (E=mc2, which everyone throughout the movie insists on pronouncing as a word, "emk") he heads for the mainland (of Australia) to patent it.
Along the way he runs into a dastardly villian (nicely over-played by John Howard) who eventually steals the bubble-producing formula. He also meets the beautiful and brilliant Marie Curie (Noble-prize-winning discoverer of radioactivity played by Le Clezio). And has many exciting adventures before his triumphant return to Tasmania.
Serious himself is rather hard to describe. He consistently maintains a wide-eyed innocence that is at first a bit too much to take but eventually sort of grows on you.
Most of his scientific pronouncements are just hokum. But enough of them are correct to suggest that Serious really does respect Einstein's intellect and ideals. Not the rather stuffy image that we have of him today, but the rebellious and revolutionary thinker he was in his pre-fame youth.
August 23, 1989