I think this is when he's...80% fly? Hard to tell.
The Fly is the same general story as Spider-man: nerdy scientist guy gets his DNA kick-started with some bug juice and gets superpowers. In Spider-man, this has the side-effect of making him emo because he can’t sleep with Kirsten Dunst. I almost never get to sleep with Kirsten Dunst, yet I don’t have pages of terrible poetry filling up my backpack. Just delicious Suzy-Q’s. In the slightly more realistic version portrayed in The Fly, bits and pieces start falling off of the scientist until he’s a horribly disgusting creature oozing various fluids. Whoops, there goes my appetite for Suzy-Q’s.
The yucky fly-scientist is played by Jeff Goldblum, probably to save money on make-up. His love interest is an intrepid lady reporter who, since this is 1986, has the exact same haircut as him. She meets him at a nerd party and follows him back to his abandoned warehouse lair research lab to report on his amazing teleportation discovery.
In reality, she’s there to let the audience know how to feel during the various stages of Goldblum’s transformation: curious, loving, horny, impressed, horny, skeptical, slightly less horny, concerned, then finally freaked the hell out. Despite this helpful guide, I started out at the freaked the hell out stage, because seriously. Have you seen Jeff Goldblum? Would you follow him into the depths of an industrial park at night where no one can hear you scream? His “research” probably involves a lot of latex gloves, grainy webcam footage, and letters cut out of magazines.
The whole movie’s stock and trade is being gross. The transformation is shown in great detail, as is Jeff Goldblum having sex. Regardless, the movie does a good job of showing what would happen if a man turned into the grossest man-fly imaginable, so it’s worth watching as long as you haven’t eaten for a couple days.
Rating: Must-see
Did I fast-forward: Yes, because Jeff Goldblum has sex. I may not be able to sleep tonight.
