Director Yahoo Serious
Starring Yahoo Serious, Odile Le Clezio, John Howard
Rated PG
Score 5.5/6

Albert Einstein is the son of a Tasmanian apple farmer, who discovers the secret of splitting the beer atom to put the bubbles back into beer. When Albert travels to Sydney to patent his invention, he meets beautiful French scientist Marie Curie, as well as several unscrupulous types who try to take advantage of the naive genius and his invention.

I’ve been meaning to review Young Einstein for awhile and a couple of weeks ago I managed to track down a DVD copy. Now sitting here several hours after watching Young Einstein I am still finding it hard to find a movie that is more ‘Aussie’ then Young Einstein. I have a feeling Paul Fenech might be capable of directing a movie that is more ‘Aussie’ then Young Einstein or has already directed one, but I think that even he might be hard pressed to come up with a story that tops the use of Nuclear fission in brewing.

Young Einstein is on of those movies capable of giving you the warm and fuzzy nostalgic feelings. The movie has a great soundtrack, that only furthers the nostalgic feelings that this movie can generate. Admittedly I was not familiar every single song on the sound track but what I loved about getting this DVD was that Great Southern Land by Icehouse plays over the DVD menu screen. Young Einstein is a little over the top in places but that just helps to further the light-hearted nature of the movie’s comedy. I loved how naive and optimistic Yahoo’s portrayal of Albert was and in turn I loved just as much how much of a cartoon villain John Howard’s Preston Preston came across as. Odile Le Clezio was very enjoyable as Marie Curie.

I have a feeling that Young Einstein probably would not be made today, or if it was there are a couple of moments in the movie that could prove to be slightly problematic for the filmmakers in the internet age, especially if they where taken out of context.

For those of you wondering why a sequel to Young Einstein was never made, Yahoo is on the record back in 1989 in an article written by the Baltimore Evening Sun that when he was asked will there be a sequel if Young Einstein was a success ‘he could never do that’.