Young Einstein

Young Einstein (1988)

Runtime: 91 minutes

Directed by: Yahoo Serious

Starring: Serious, Odile Le Clezio, John Howard, Peewee Wilson, Su Cruickshank

From: Warner Bros.

Hi, my name is Blair Russell, and I saw Young Einstein theatrically in 1989! I have no idea WHY a strange Australian comedy was experienced that way. It better have not been a suggestion by me at the age of 8 to see something starring a bloke calling himself YAHOO SERIOUS who had big silly hair. There is a reason why I finally gave this a second shot; an article randomly recommended on Facebook was from Rolling Stone's Australian wing. It detailed how Serious had... serious allegations made about him squatting in someone’s house! More on that at the end.

While the next year I got to see GHOST DAD theatrically (yes, the movie is awful), the summer of ’89 also had me viewing both Batman & Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom theatrically. It’s a movie never watched again until last night, which probably says a lot right there. I recall my reaction at the time as being “WTF is Young Einstein?” That’s also my reaction now at the age of 44! 

This is a picture which is an alternate history where Albert Einstein was part of a Tasmanian apple farming family, he “put bubbles in beer” by splitting the atom, he invested rock ‘n roll and also surfing… even by Aussie humor standards, baffling. I’m sure Mom LOVED that he lived in a flophouse w/ prostitutes, or that there was a “drop the soap” joke made in the shower at an insane asylum!

I certainly didn’t remember that this also had Marie Curie (unlike Einstein, I probably didn’t know her at the age of 8), Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, a jerk named PRESTON PRESTON who does what we call now “mansplaining,” a “Tasmanian Devil” shown which looks like a Critter, or the 80’s Aussie New Wave bops on the soundtrack despite the 1905 setting. There are some laughs and it was nice that actual scientific principles were discussed, but there wasn’t much of a plot or plot momentum, and sometimes the humor really fell flat. “Weird” is really the overarching word I’ll use to describe Young Einstein.

It was nice to finally revisit something only seen 36 years ago-and I can laugh now that there was the theatrical experience, as weird as there was a theatrical experience for such a random picture. Despite my attendance, the movie did not replicate the success it had in Australia at the American box office. As for what Yahoo Serious has done in recent years… apparently he’s fallen on hard times.

Yahoo was living in his car before an older gentleman gave him a place to stay—only for that older person to develop dementia and move to a nursing home. Allegedly Serious is refusing to move out of the house that needs to be sold. No matter the truth, it’s a shame for someone who I always remembered for an inexplicable movie from way back when.