Right well time for yet another post on this review blog, and its yet another film this time, and I've gone for a comedy, and its one of my favourite comedies, which is The Man With Two Brains, which is easily the best the film Steve Martin ever made in my opinion anyway. And with that let's get to it.....
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Right so starting with the usual plotting stuff, the film begins with Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr (Steve Martin at his very best here) a renowned brain surgeon, who has developed a unique method of cranial screw-top brain surgery, who accidentally knocks down a beautiful woman, Dolores Benedict (Kathleen Turner) on the street whilst driving. Michael decides to operate on her in order to save her life, although his colleague and fellow Doctor, Dr Brandon (Peter Hobbs) advises him against this as it would make him too emotionally involved. Regardless Michael performs the operation, which is a success and its not long before Dolores recovers, and Michael, who is a widow, falls for her, and the two of them soon marry. Dolores is of course in reality a gold digging femme fatale who is only interested in Michael's money, and as she recovers, she starts to torment him by pretending to be too ill to have sex with him. Michael then decides in order to get their marriage under way to go on a honeymoon, which also turns out to be a business trip in Vienna.
Michael while in Vienna hears of stories surrounding a serial killer named the "elevator killer", and during his presentation at a conference, using a dead test subject, but when he opens the dead man's head, nothing but oranges fall out, as the brain has been stolen. After the conference, Michael meets an eccentric scientist, Dr Alfred Necessiter (David Warner) who tells him that he has created a new technique of keeping brains alive in jars with the use of a special liquid, which he shows him at his laboratory and that he has devised a method of transferring the thoughts from a dying brain into another body. Michael then returns to his hotel room where Dolores is about to having behind touched by a man, who is paying her money to do so, but Michael is enraged by this and tells him to get out, and he declares his marriage to Dolores as over. Michael then returns to Necessiter's lab where he sits and waits on his return, but while he waits he sings a song which another voice suddenly joins in with him. Michael then sees that he can communicate with one of the brains in a jar, brain 21, who tells him she is Anne Uumellmayahe (voiced by Sissy Spacek). When Necessiter arrives at the lab, he is unable to hear Anne, and Michael realises that they are communicating by telepathy.
Michael then returns back to his hotel room, where Dolores has written a fake suicide note (as she has learned of Michael's dead Aunt's estate), which she has left on the chandeliers, on hearing her scream he runs outside and sees that she is standing on the window ledge, where she feigns dispair, and Michael rescues her. Later on that night after Michael and Dolores finally consumate their marriage, Michael receives a telepathic cry for help from Anne. Michael goes to Necessiter's lab again where he finds that Anne has been placed in a plastic pod where we find out that Necessiter plans to transfer her mind into the body of a gorilla. Michael steals Anne's brain and takes her back to his hotel room and hides her away, and the next he rents out a private home, so he can hide Anne away from Dolores (who goes with him). Its not long before Michael and Anne fall in love with each other, and Dolores quickly grows concerned and follows Michael around, as she even sees him kiss Anne's brain on a lake (with a pair of fake plastic lips!). Dolores soon confronts Michael about him kissing the brain, and he grows angry when he receives a call from his lawyer about his Aunt's estate, realising that Dolores "only stayed around for the money!", he gets ready to pack and leave her. Dolores then takes Anne's brain and puts her in the oven to cook, but soon rescues her from the oven and throw Dolores out the house, telling her she won't get a penny of the money.
Michael by now is obssessed with being together with Anne, as he goes to Necessiter and begs him to remove his brain and put it in a tank with Anne's as they have fallen in love. Necessiter however tells Michael that her brain won't last long as the special fluid can only sustain the brain for so long, and it will be necessary for him to find a body for Anne before her brain dies. Michael then after this decides to go and try and find a body for Anne, but in doing so he also has Dolores gunning after him aswell, as the film reaches its crazy climax.
(Ok that's the plot summary over with)
This is without a doubt the best film Steve Martin ever made, as the Man with two brains saw Martin at the peak of his comedic talents, and the film has the perfect mix of broad humour and mad zany comedy. And in its own strange way its even quite an endearing love story as Michael falls in love with a brain, and as he says to Anne on the lake"you are the most complete woman I've ever met. All my life I've been looking for women with perfect bodies, 10s, but now for the first time, I'm aroused by a mind!". But its the really silly madcap moments in the film that make it work so well, such an example (of which there are many!) is in the scene where Michael goes up to the little girl after he has knocked down Dolores, and he tells her in a great detail what she is to do when calling for the paramedics. And the little girl says "it sounds like a subdural haematoma to me" and Michael angrily replies "Three years of nursery schools and you think you know it all! Its not subdural its epidural! Goddamn that makes me mad!".
There are of course more examples, of which I'll mention one or two, starting with the scene where Michael expresses his sexual frustration to his boss, Dr Brandon, and then he does a wall jump and a somersault, after tensley ripping the door handle off the door, and Brandon says to him "even to me you seem a little jumpy!". And the conference scene where he tells the audience his theory on cranial screw-top surgery and they all murmur in disagreement, and he asks his fellow doctor what they are doing, who says "they are just going: no, no, no, no no," and Michael says "you mean just a general murmur??" and the doctor says "yeah murmur" to which Michael addresses the audience and says "you may murmur all you like!" and they murmur even more.
Other scenes I like include Michael's scene where he confronts Dolores over her attempt to cook Anne in the oven, and Anne after she is taken out the oven counts to ten leaving out nine, and he says "you cooked her nines!" and he and Dolores struggle as she tries to knive him and he knees her in the crotch and she says yells "oh my balls!". And one of my favourite scenes in the film is undoubtedly the drunk test, where Michael is pulled over for speeding, and the police officer makes him walk a straight line, then do a hand stand, a somersault, and then do a tap dance, juggle and sing the Catalina Magdelena Lupensteiner Wallabeiner song, which pre-empts one of Martin's best lines in the film when he says "Goddamn your drunk tests are hard!".
Performance wise this is definitely one of Steve Martin's best comedic performances, as Dr Hfuhruhurr, the brilliant but ever so slightly unhinged surgeon, who's name no one can seem to pronounce right! (except Anne of course). Martin plays Hfuhruhurr as being quite sympathetic, yet quite egotisitical at the same time, where he clearly is in mourning of his late wife, Rebecca one minute, but flashing newspaper cuttings on the lining of his jacket saying how great he is and "Dolly Parton wants to have my baby!". And I like the scene where he looks at her painting longingly near the start of the film and says to her about Dolores "she has a behind so sexy you could eat lunch off it, just like we did, remember??". And by the end of the film Martin's performance comes almost completely deranged as he becomes obssessed with trying to save Anne's brain, and finding a replacement body for her. This also leads into another funny scene where Michael looks around at the bodies in the morgue and he says to the orderly who shows him a corpse and he says "she just doesn't have any.... vavooom!" and the orderly says "she is dead you know!" and he says "I know but nothing really leaps out at me here". As Hfuhruhurr, Martin shows that his character has at times almost superhuman strengths in that he can use his hands as suction cups to move safely over the fallen ledge to rescue Dolores in the scene where she pretends to throw herself off their hotel room window ledge. I also love his line where Necessiter tells him that he could put Anne's mind in the body of a gorilla and Michael says "I couldn't fuck a gorilla!".
Kathleen Turner is also great in her role as Dolores, a cunning and maniuplative gold digger, who is out to get her hands on Hfuhruhurr's money, and she throughout the film teases and taunts him, by feigning her illness to put off having sex. Turner's first scene in the film is really funny when she just about finishes off her former lover, who says she won't get a penny as he changed his will, and she says "you son of a bitch! Well I guess I'll just have to find me a new man to torture!". Her confrontatiom with Michael over Anne's brain is also funny when she point blank asks him "Michael were you on the lake today kissing your brain???", which he denies and she says "its funny how there was a man out there on the lake that looked just like you kissing a brain, how many can there be like that???" and Michael replies "oh around here??? There must be hundreds!". Her scene with Michael when she arrives back at his home is funny when she looks with contempt at the two gardeners in Michael's employee outside the house, and she asks "what are those two assholes doing on the porch?". And Michael laughs and says "they're not assholes, its pronounced azelias".
David Warner is also very funny as Dr Alfred Necessiter who is also rather deranged, yet is also a brilliant brain scientist, who has developed an advanced technique of mind transfer without "even opening the skull!". And I love the scene where he tells Michael that he has had two near successes but still has problems perfecting the brain transfer process, as he says he has two test subjects that do nothing but this: and he claps his hands together and blows a raspberry and he says "but I think I've solved the problem!". This is followed by another great line from Martin who says after repeating the same action "so this is my wife??? I know her, she'd hate that!". I also like the moment where he tells his next door neighbours to shut up "with your TV blaring out and your twelve kids running up and down the halls!". And finally another line I like that Warner has is when he says to Michael about his quest to find a body for Anne "if you're unsuccessful I'll have the gorilla wired and ready!".
And finally Sissy Spacek, who strangely didn't receive a screen credit for her voice work as Anne (maybe because she wasn't on screen???) does a wonderful job as the brain and the woman of Michael's dreams. Spacek's sweet Southern tones also add a nice tone to Anne's character, and her surname provides a good laugh, especially as she is the only person that can pronounce Michael's surname correctly, but she matter of factly says "how else can you pronounce it??? Its H-F-U-H-R-U-H-U-R-R ain't it???". I also quite like her first scene where she asks Michael "will I ever be able to play the piano again?" and he lamely says "I think... no".
And quickly a big shout also has to go out to the director, Carl Reiner, who does a brilliant job here and it was his third collaboration with Martin, having previously directed The Jerk and Dead men don't wear plaid, and I think its safe to say this saw their partnership hit its peak right here.
Well that's it for yet another very exhaustive and lengthy post on another film, and The Man With Two Brains is without a doubt one of the best and funniest comedy films from the 1980s, which still remains as fresh and funny as the day it was released.
And with that, that will do her.
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