It’s hard to say what’s worse in My Science Project, Beutel’s lame characters or his direction of the actors playing those roles. And I’m not counting Dennis Hopper, who plays an ex-hippie in the picture. While Hopper certainly has a poorly written character and Beutel’s direction of him is bad… it was Hopper’s decision to play a caricature of himself. I’ll give Beutel a pass for that one.

But Fisher Stevens (as a television trivia obsessed Brooklyn “greaseball”), Raphael Sbarge (an overweight–the padding is visible–nerd) and Richard Masur (a cowboy detective)? Beutel doesn’t just have dumb ideas, he’s also incapable of executing them.

Science Project also suffers from a lack of plot. High school senior John Stockwell discovers an alien gadget and complications ensue, including a time warp with future mutants, a surprisingly competent dinosaur and a damsel in distress. But there’s no drama to the plot. Beutel just throws in things he’d seen in other movies and relies on Fisher’s bad jokes to make the film palatable.

The damsel, played by Danielle von Zerneck, and Stockwell actually have a fairly decent romance. Though one wonders if Beutel ever actually attended high school, given the absurdities of the one in Science Project.

Von Zerneck’s always good, even when the script’s bad, and Stockwell’s best in his scenes with her. The final third lacks their chemistry and the film suffers.

Beutel’s composition is competently unoriginal. Peter Bernstein’s music helps.

But Beutel’s Science Project still fails (sorry, couldn’t resist).