Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

If you like to be scared, if you like to laugh, and if you like to learn a thing or two at the movies, this absolutely cannot be missed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It all started good with an alien craft crash, military "cover up" and the typical American high schools clichés. The jock needs to find a science project really quick to graduate, there are 2 nerds and the crazy science professor.But then it fell apart.The president requests his military scientists to destroy a crashed alien craft. WTF?"I need a science project. Oh wait, I am going to break into to a military junkyard and find something." What a clever and sound idea!For your reading pleasure, here's a non comprehensive list of "hows" and "whys":Why the hell are the characters plugging the alien device to a battery for where nothing obvious gives them any clue to do so? Why choose to detonate an electric pylon (and black out the city) after stealing dynamite when you can simply cut the power at the fuse box? Why is the nerd able to fight like Chuck Norris? How are these kids used to M16 and their grenade launcher. Why is the main character using the grenade launcher against the dinosaur in last resort (perhaps he was not used to it after all :-))? How can they defeat a gladiator with their bare hands? How can they steal a police car so easily (with a shotgun inside). Why are the M16 fitted with unlimited ammos? Why are the viet congs armed with M16s?How can the GTO be faster than the speed of light? It overtakes the electric surge on the wires so that they can tape the dynamite on the pylon and then set it off. When a car is at maximum revs in top gear, activating boost will only destroy the drive train and/or the engine. It won't go any faster. Why is the car breaking down because of the alien device when they are on the road and why can it be fixed in the garage when the alien device is right next to it?The list of "hows" and "whys" goes on and on... I don't even want to address the little prick played by Fisher Stevens. Sighs...A waste of time unless you want to laugh at all nonsensical stuff that's packed in 1 hour 30 minutes or unless you want to see the "hows" and "whys" for yourself.

1985's My Science Project is a childhood favorite of mine. Despite some awesome special effects, it's mostly forgotten today.It begins in the 1950's. President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought to an Arizona Air Force base and shown a crashed UFO. He orders the high-ranking generals, "Get rid of it!" Flashforward to modern times (a.k.a. the 1980's). Mike Harlan is a student at a high school in Carson, Arizona, known as "Motorhead Mike" to his friends because of his love of cars. He has problems. His single father is remarrying to an Avon saleswoman, he's recently had a bad breakup with his bitch girlfriend Crystal, and on top of everything else, he's going to flunk science unless his science project is, as the teacher (played by Dennis Hopper!) puts it, "dino-supreme." Mike is asked out on a date by nerdy girl Ellie Sawyer, and, to spite Crystal, he agrees, but Mike's idea of a date is to drag Ellie along to the nearby decommissioned Air Force base, now used as a junkyard. His brilliant plan is to find some random doo-dad to fix it up and pass it off as his science project. What he finds is a futuristic device which is apparently the engine or power source to the crashed UFO seen previously. It resembles a lightning globe from Spencer's Gifts.After getting the "gizmo, " as Mike's deadbeat best friend Vince Latello calls it, back to school, Mike discovers that the thing gobbles up raw energy like a cop on a donut factory (to steal a line from Ghostbusters 2). Hooking it up to a car battery causes A) the battery to drain and melt (!), and B) a Grecian vase to appear out of thin air. Consulting school nerd Sherman Reardon, Mike and Vince learn that the device is capable of creating a time warp when it has access to power.They show it to the science teacher who rather stupidly hooks it up to an electrical outlet, which results in him being zapped into the future, and, after some further complicated shenanigans, Mike, Ellie and Vince are forced to raid Mike's dad's hardware store for some dynamite, which they use to blow up an electrical tower, stopping the "gizmo" from feeding off Carson's power station. This gets them arrested. Well, Mike and Vince anyway. The cops ignore Ellie for some reason.To prove their story and spring her kinda-sorta boyfriend, Ellie returns to the school to get the machine, where she encounters Sherman the nerd. Intrigued, Sherman repeats the science teacher's mistake and plugs the device back in, only this time, with nothing stopping it (the powerlines have been fixed), it starts sucking up so much energy that soon all of Carson is blacked out. Mike and Vince use the confusion to escape custody and quickly discover their school is now the center for an ever-expanding time warp threatening to consume all of Carson, and eventually the world.Venturing within, our heroes have to find and rescue Ellie and unplug the device and stop the warp before it expands and destroys all of creation. To do so, they'll have to fight their way past a variety of grouchy individuals teleported in from other time periods, including a Roman gladiator, a caveman, Viet Cong soldiers, mutants from the future, and, in my personal favorite sequence, a giant tyrannosaurus rex.So, it's a fairly small-scale film in terms of special effects. The tyrannosaur is the movie's big setpiece, but they went all-out on him. He's gorgeous. He's (apparently) a combination of a back-projected puppet and a full-size animatronic, and he looks very realistic for 1985. In fact I'd go so far as to say that he's the best-looking dinosaur made prior to Jurassic Park.

My Science Project is a great 80s sci-fi movie about a kid in high school who sneaks into an old air force junkyard and stumbles upon an alien device discarded in a 1950s fallout shelter, and tries to turn it in as his science project. When his teacher, played by Dennis Hopper, finds a way to power the device, he zaps himself into another time dimension and from there, all hell breaks loose. Eventually, the kid and his best friend, played by Fisher Stevens, find themselves battling their way through Roman gladiators, the Viet Cong, post-apocalyptic mutants and even a Tyrannosaurus Rex in each room of their High School as they make their way toward the science hall to deactivate the device and save their town.Those who criticize the writing and dialogue miss it's depth as it is as much a movie about trust as it is about time travel.John Stockwell plays a believable high school cool kid who drives a muscle car and hangs out at auto shop. Fisher Stevens plays his hilariously bigoted sidekick buddy Vinnie from Brooklyn. Danielle von Zerneck plays Harlan's (Stockwell) geeky would-be bounce-back girlfriend after his bimbo girlfriend dumps him. Raphael Sbarge plays a hopelessly nerdy librarian that ultimately helps Harlan shut down the device. Dennis Hopper plays an unhinged ex-hippie turned science teacher who gets sent into another dimension but shows up at the end.The special effects are dated but hold well. That T-Rex looked good! Don't get me wrong, it's no Jurassic Park, but it's no Gumby Claymation dinosaur either. If you can overlook the fact that the alien device looks like something you can buy from Spencer's Gifts and some of the cheesiness that comes with an 80s movie, it's a pretty exciting film.If your a sci-fi fan, it's definitely worth a look. It's not just a good idea, it's a good movie as well. I loved it.

I love 'My Science Project'. I first saw it on HBO one day back in 87 and loved it right away, it's a great sci-fi thriller, with many moments of comedy as well.SPOILER ALERT!!!It concerns a car nut high school student played by John Stockwell (you'd think that after the hell he went through with Christine, he'd stay the heck away from cars), who needs a science project to pass his science class, problem is, he doesn't have one. So one night he, and his new girlfreind are rumaging around in an old military junk yard outside of town hoping to find something suitable to impress his teacher, and find a very odd little machine. It's high tech looking, with a glass globe mounted in the middle that when powered up, emits electricity that resembles one of those plasma globes you'd find at Spencers Gifts in the mall. As he's cleaning it, he decides to hook it up to a power supply, this turns out to be a huge mistake as 'the gizmo', as it's called in the film, turns out to be an engine from a spacecraft and can locally warp time and space, bringing objects and people from other times into our own. It soon goes wildly out of control and eventually the whole school is caught in a warp, and it's up to Stockwell, and his wise cracking freind, played wonderfully by Fisher Stevens, to shut down the gizmo for good.A very underrated film, with impressive visuals that still hold up well (except for the dinosaur), great acting from it's cast, inspired writing, and when watched on a good surround set up, a great audio mix to boot. It means no harm, and is fun.