Upsetting Day: Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde must have been the easiest movie to pitch in Hollywood history. It's a public domain title with name recognition, but we add boobs and make it a zany sex comedy. That's everything a 1990s studio executive could ever dream of! The punchline of every joke can just be, "here is a penis where you didn't expect one." The thing practically writes its penis. See, that's always funny!

Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde is a movie that thinks the step between man and woman in the gender transformation process is the cartoon wolf who goes awooga when he sees a pretty lady. Its premise relies on the idea that men have no idea what's going on with women's bodies to an extent that goes beyond normal suspension of disbelief. It exists in a universe where Stephen Tobolowsky sees a woman suck her breasts back into her body and yells, "Did I do something wrong?" As if he thinks retracting boobies are a standard feature of the female body that he has accidentally triggered. While on the subject of boobies, there's no workplace on the planet where these gifs are safe:

The Ms. in that title is doing a lot of work to tell you what you can expect from this movie. While the original Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was about the dangers of giving in to your baser instincts, Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde is about the danger of horny women being allowed to work. The original Mr. Hyde was a murdering monster with a completely unchecked temper who did nothing but drink, gamble, fuck, and murder. Helen Hyde is just a woman who maims one person, and I'm sorry, but if you want me to feel sorry for that person, don't cast Jeremy Piven for the role. Jeremy Piven's entire career is built on the fact that he looks like a guy who's been banned from every Hot Dog On A Stick franchise in America for making lewd gestures at employees with his corndog.

Immediately, the very first unbelievable thing this movie asks you to believe is that the main character, Richard Jacks, went through his entire life with the name Dick Jacks and turned out fairly normal. Also, he’s frustrated with his life because he wants to be a chemist who works in medicine, but there's just no money in it. No money in pharmaceuticals, they imply. All the money is in making fancy perfumes for women. The famously poor pharmaceutical industry can't hold a candle to the plies of cash being forked in by Britney Spears Circus Fantasy.

So Richard wastes his days trying to make ladies smell nice and spends his nights looking for, I guess, a pharmaceutical cure for evil? We don't go into a lot of detail about what he's doing beyond "science." His female boss is mean to him because she thinks they need a woman scientist to make women's perfume. Yet, she doesn't hire a woman; she hires Richard and then tells him that his perfume smells like, "You bottled the farts that bubbled out of my husband's bath water."

Anyway, Richard's uncle dies and he inherits his great grandfather's scientific notebooks. He quickly learns that his family name used to be Jekyll, his great-grandfather was good friends with Robert Lewis Stevenson, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was all true. He uses the research in the notebooks to recreate the Jekyll and Hyde formula, but he adds in a bunch of estrogen because he thinks estrogen will be the cure for evil. If you have any questions about this, please refer to the many pictures of a computer flashing the word SUCCESSFUL that they show in the movie.

Instantly, Richard decides to test the formula on himself. Now you might be asking, is Richard evil? If not, how will he know if it works? Don't do that. He's about to grow boobies. Sit back and await the hilarity. The delayed effects of the formula kick in when Richard suddenly rushes to a job interview he's forgotten about. The first thing that marks his shift from man to woman is his fingernails grow and manicure themselves. Do men think women are born with French tips?

This first transformation scene is pretty amazing in a lot of ways. I wish that I could make the comical pop of this man's testicles retracting into his body my ringtone. It's a perfect sound effect. The lingering shot of his deflating penis is high art, and the face makes when he sees his boobies for the first time; what can I say? It's a perfect awooga.

Once Richard's transformation into Helen Hyde is complete, we get a voiceover of Helen thinking, "This is great; I've got Richard's brain and this body. In three weeks, I'll be running that company." You know, because it's famously so much easier for women to rise through the ranks at companies. That's why almost all CEOs are female.

Helen's plan for making it to the top of Richard's perfume company is to jerk off anyone who gets in her way, and it works! She has no job history, no social security number, and no degree, but every time she runs into a problem, she's like, "I will touch your penis." And whatever man is questioning her has some kind of biological reaction where forgive me, I don't understand male anatomy that well, but from what I gather, their brain falls out of their pee hole, and they are helpless. The men in this movie treat seeing breasts like being tased. They are completely incapacitated. Stephen Tobolowsky is so horny he shoves her whole foot in his mouth.

Helen sleeps with both of the male hire ups at Richard's company, even the gay one who's played by Harvey Fierstein. The women in Richard's life all like Helen better than him. She buys the office secretary a pretty dress and befriends his fiance, Sarah, by sympathizing with her about Richard overworking himself. She also brings Richard's boss a perfume she's happy with, although it's implied that's only because she thinks a woman created it and the scent is actually an old reworked scent of Richard's. Whatever, the point is, the workplace is just easier for women.

The only person at the company who dislikes Helen is Jeremy Piven, a colleague of Richard's who is the only man at the company Helen refuses to sleep with; I'm assuming because he's just too Jeremy Piven and even scientific sex demons have some standards. Instead of sexing Piven's concerns away, Helen decides to continually maim him when he hits on her. He tells her he has invented a special cologne that will make her his love slave, and she switches it out with sulfuric acid, which Piven sprays on his face and hands for some reason.

Later on, she electrocutes Piven by pretending to be a stranded motorist and luring him to her car. This doesn't kill him, though, and right before he gets electrocuted, he mutters, "Chicks dig guys with burns. They dig it; they dig it, they dig it. Rub it, smack it, love it down." So, again I have to question what exactly this woman has done wrong. Electrocuting Jeremy Piven is morally gray at worst.

Richard gets into several comical situations where he suddenly transforms back from Helen or into Helen at inconvenient times and hijinks ensue. My favorite of these is when Helen is seducing Stephen Tobolowsky for the fourth time in the movie and changes in the middle, leaving Richard trapped in the bathroom in Helen's sexy lingerie, so he rappels out the window, shows his dick to an old lady, and lands naked butthole-first in a bush. The lady in this scene deserves an award for Best Staring at Genitals.

Or, there's the scene where Richard thinks he's figured out when Helen will reappear, so he strips naked, shreds his clothes, and writes I screwed Mintz and Dubois on his tummy. Then he invites everyone to his office for a meeting, thinking he's about to change and get Helen fired, but Helen never shows up. Somehow Richard does not get fired for this. In this universe, nudity is a fun work prank.

Soon, Richard figures out that he's spending more and more time as Helen, and she's eventually going to take over. He decides to cut his wrists to prevent evil Helen from taking over, which is too dark for a sexy comedy where punchlines are mostly boy part now girl part, or boy in pretty outfit now. In his darkest hour, Richard remembers there are security cameras at the lab that must have caught him turning into Helen for the first time. He steals the footage and shows it to his girlfriend Sarah, who agrees to help him get rid of Helen, and suddenly there is also a way to do that with a serum we never see him develop.

We get another stellar transformation sequence as Sarah handcuffs Richard to the bed and watches him transform so she can give the serum to Helen. Of course, Helen escapes because Sarah left a lit candle on the table right next to where she planned to force the injection into Helen. I hope it was worth it to make sure this science exorcism was peach Bellini scented, Sarah.

A chase ensues where Helen could get on a plane and flee the country or even hide out in a hotel for a week until she's completely taken over, but no, Helen's one goal is to work in the perfume industry, and her perfume is launching that night, so she goes right to where Sarah knows she'll be. Again, the most evil thing this woman does is attempt to participate in commerce.

So Sarah catches up to Helen, gives her the good boy serum and Helen transforms onstage back into Richard, getting a full boner for comedic effect on the way, of course, and everyone in the audience treats this like a totally plausible thing? Richard announces that in order to create the ultimate feminine fragrance he had to get in touch with the part of himself that is a woman, dress like a woman, talk like a woman, and act like a woman. They all just watched his boobs disappear and an entire audience of people is like, “Yes this is a thing that happens sometimes.” He doesn’t mention the Jekyll and Hyde thing at all and no one has questions.

No movie has ever ended quicker. Richard gets a raise and his own lab to study whatever he wants. I'm still not sure what that is? I'm going to say evil DNA? I feel the quick ending is an apology from the screenwriters for being forced to produce Weird Science but less respectful to women and less plausible than the movie where two teenage boys use their computer to make a sex wizard.

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