Young Einstein

Presenting the second in line of Australian 'classic' films.
This movie begins with the sound of a didgeridoo playing. Could we get anymore Australian?

Albert Einstein (played by Yahoo Serious, also writer/director) is a young scientist in early 1900's Tasmania, Australia.

He lives with his parents who own an apple farm but Albert just doesn't fit in.

He experiments with scientific theories, and then his dad gives him a challenge in his grandfather's beer brewing shed - how to put bubbles into beer.

Albert then splits the beer atom (yes that's what I said) and on the advice of his dad, travels to Sydney to patent the idea.

On the train he meets Marie Curie who believes in his ideas and helps him along the way. Preston Preston, a snob lusting after Marie (and works at the patent office) is also on the same train who later steals his idea.


When he gets to Sydney though, he needs an invention to patent not just his formula (E=MC squared) and also invents an electric guitar. This same electric guitar will save the world when Preston (using Einstein's formula) creates a large bubble beer brewing machine (essentially a nuclear reactor) and Einstein has to absorb it's energy through the guitar at a scientific academy awards ceremony in Paris where Charles Darwin is also in attendance.



I had forgotten how crazy ridiculous this movie is. I mean this in the nicest possible way. This movie was a regular staple through my childhood, released in 1988, I was at the right age to love watching it's silliness but not really understand what was going on. Even re watching it yesterday I still remembered all of Serious's mannerisms in playing the character. Two friends I asked had not even seen it yet so maybe I'm in the minority of people my age who have seen it?



During the course of the film, Einstein turns himself black, red, grey and white. He also invents surfing and rock and roll music, woos Marie Curie, flys a hot air balloon, rides a horse, and break dances. Need I say more.



Slight exaggeration of the Tasmanian devil



There is a reference to Tasmania being the apple isle of Australia, Einstein is constantly eating apples (sometimes even taking only one bite) and throwing it away.

There are Australian fauna everywhere. Kangaroos at the university, his house, a koala while he's making his surfboard, a galah sitting on his shoulder while he's patching the roof. No wonder Americans think we ride kangaroos to school.



The scene that stuck with me the most, being an animal lover from a young age was the infamous 'kitten pie' scene. Halfway through the movie Einstein gets locked up in an insane asylum (the mad scientists wing no less) and the macabre chef places live kittens into a pie case and then plops pastry over the top of them, with no care for their little mews. Luckily there is a happy ending for these kittens otherwise I think little Amiee may have been traumatised.

Side note: there are kangaroos in suburbia but the ones we see more often have been hit by cars. Koalas are endangered (I think) and I've only ever seen them in the zoo. My brother has a hand reared pink and grey galah named Gus and while he will sit on your shoulder, he is also a little terror and will bite your toes.



The humour is mostly slapstick and while I didn't laugh out loud a lot like I imagined I did as a kid, the film is still enjoyable in the way a silly but innocent movie is.

There are just so many random little moments during the movie. For example, the mad scientists are having their shower/bath time in the asylum and there is a character in the background who spends a good 2 minutes scrubbing his backside.



 How we bathe down under..nah just Tasmanians



Serious plays a likable character, and there's no doubt he has a creative brain for being able to come up with some truly random stuff. He is also played as a bit of a dimwit: not realising he's lodging in a brothel, regularly blowing himself up. His hair in itself is unexplainable (and gives not so complimentary comparisons to Carrot Top).

I'll admit to probably liking this film more than I would if it wasn't Australian and purely also for nostalgic reasons. What's interesting is that I could not imagine this movie getting made today. It's definitely original.

Grossing over 100 million worldwide, it was a big success for a little Australian movie. Serious went on to make Reckless Kelly and Mr Accident, neither of which did as well. He's now reportedly working on a more sombre film about the Kokoda Track.

From yahooserious.com: "I had no intention of making an historical dramatised "documentary" of Albert Einstein but rather to explore the spirit of this rebellious, lateral thinker with the clowning sense of humour. It gave me license to create a strange, epic cartoon with heightened characters bathed in a world of science, music and "fantastic realism".