THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS

US, 1983, 93 minutes, Colour.
Steve Martin, Kathleen Turner, David Warner, Paul Benedict, James Cromwell.
Directed by Carl Reiner.

The Man With Two Brains is the third collaboration between writer-director Carl Reiner and comedian Steve Martin (who also collaborated with the screenplay). After the broad humour of The Jerk, they made the pastiche of old Hollywood films Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. They continued the vein of The Man With Two Brains with Martin and Lily Tomlin co-starring as the two characters in one body, All of Me.

The film sends up the mad scientist experimenting with brains Hollywood genre, gives Steve Martin the opportunity for some of his engaging deadpan comedy and had Kathleen Turner as a monstrous villainess. David Warner does a turn as ~ a scientist.

An enjoyable example of Steve Martin's comedy.

1. The appeal of the film? Comedy? Science fiction? Send-up of science fiction conventions? The pleasant hero, the villainess?

2. Production values: location photography, America, Europe? The use of Austrian locations? The overtones of Vienna and science and psychology? The musical score?

3. The appeal of Steve Martin as a comedian? his underplay, verbal and visual humour? Sending up of conventional types? His capacity for sentiment and romance? His skill in this film?

4. The humour of the plot? its exaggerations, its send-up of conventions, spoof? Its incredibility? The irony of the popular television compere Merv Griffin being the elevator murderer?

5. Steve Martin's sketch of Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr? his work, brilliance, his running over Dolores? His saving her lite and the humour of the cranial screwtop surgery? Falling in love? Marriage? Her keeping him at a distance? Vienna, the fright of the elevator murderer and the stealing of brains? The visit to Dr. Necessiter? The fluid for keeping the disembodied brains alive? Michael's disillusionment with Dolores? The discovery of Anne Uumellmahaye and his falling in love with her brain, her mind? Dolores scheming against Michael, her trying to be seductive? The placing of Anne's brain in Dolores' dead body after she is killed by the elevator murderer? (Michael unable to kill her.) The irony of Anne being a compulsive eater, Dolores becoming very fat, but Michael still in love with her?

6. Kathleen Turner's style as the vamp? Causing her patron to have a seizure? Run over, falling in love and marriage? Her keeping at a distance, then playing up to him after the discovery about the money? The attempts to kill her? The irony of her being made fat by Anne's mind? The contrast with the character of Anne? Steve Martin's ability to suggest a character even while he is courting a brain in fluid in a bottle!

7. Dr. Necessiter and the Austrian tradition of science, psychology, his help?

8. The various devices for the satirising of the science fiction, laboratories, the elevator murderer, the subjective look as the victims recognised the killer? The chases, the humorous routines? A humorous variation on American comic traditions?