Creator is a 1985 comedy about an eccentric scientist who teaches a student in his own manner while he looks for a way to clone his deceased wife.
Cloning has sort of fallen to the wayside in science fiction, or at least become so synonymous with it, there’s barely a register in the audience’s mind that it’s happening, or significant. George Lucas had an entire army of them made for his Star Wars franchise, and since the mid-90s, clones have featured so often in movies the wonder of it has all but disappeared. One might say the concept has been cloned to death.
However, up til then, cloning had a long slow rise in becoming part of the genre, with the idea really gaining ground in the 1950s, a full twenty years after Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World sort of planted the seed as it were for genetically reproducing another human. Then came the 1980s and the idea that we might be actually be able to perform such a feat started gaining traction, and before I veer off the road and careen over a cliff of exposition on the history of the science, I’ll stop there and let you head into the abyss of exploration on your own. It’s well worth it.
So, here we are in the 1980s, and Hollywood is starting to take renewed interest in this whole cloning thing again and in the mix arrives this slight little film from director Ivan Passer called Creator, based on the book by Jeremy Leven. It’s a romantic comedy by default and as such feels immediately out of place because of the name headlining the film. That’s Peter O’Toole, a name most know from his much-celebrated work in David Lean‘s 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia. What’s he doing here? This is one of his generations – heck the whole of the cinematic history – greatest thespians. How did he end up in a minor comedy about a college kid trying to get laid?
Well, that description is really rather reductionist, despite how accurate it might be. Creator is indeed much more than its parts and with O’Toole as the lead, a far better film than it really deserves to be. This is a movie that blends the science of cloning and the madness of falling of love very well, combing the two into a funny, clever, and honestly moving little story about what it means to be human.
O’Toole plays Dr. Harry Wolper, an eccentric (of course), cigar-chomping medical professor in southern California who lost his wife Lucy thirty years earlier during childbirth. Since then, he’s devoted quite a bit of his time and resources in attempting to bring her back as a clone. So far, no luck. However, he feels he’s on the brink of a major development and needs a full-time student assistant to help him continue.
Enter Boris Lafkin (Vincent Spano), a pre-med who hasn’t quite got hold of himself yet, undisciplined and unmotivated, despite his best efforts, spending a great deal of his time looking for the perfect girl. Guess where he finds one. He follows the lovely Barbara Spencer (Virginia Madsen), herself a research assistant, right in the lab where Wolper is ready to set his snare and snag Boris from a competing doctor. Wolper offers Boris 12 credits … and the name of the girl … to work exclusively for him. He agrees, and before he knows it, the kid is entangled in both a wild experiment to bring back a dead woman and figuring out how to keep the girl he’s fallen in love with. It’ll take more than a formula on a chalkboard to sort it out.
Creator is not a wacky scientist in a laboratory movie, even though both those things are in the movie, O’Toole famously quirky but playing Wolper as a man obsessed by love not science even if he is confused about both. What we learn though, through the addition of another young woman named Meli (Mariel Hemingway), is that Wolper has far more to learn about life and love than what he’s doing with test tubes and Petri dishes. I won’t spoil what this relationship becomes but it’s handled well. Hemingway is such a natural and with O’Toole, is a thunderous ball of energy.
This all runs parallel with Boris and Barbara as their own relationship takes root, much about them slowly revealing themselves to be echos of Wolper’s life with Lucy. It’s cleverly done and the two young actors are very convincing, the chemistry, if you will, pretty potent throughout. Sure, the film dips into the oft-visited well but that’s to be expected, and as a throwback to 80s cinema, is gem all its own.
What’s fun about all this, even as some of it sticks to old-hat relics of romantic drama cliches, is how accessible it all is, with plenty to make this a superior entry in the genre. O’Toole easily is the draw but the whole cast, including a supporting role for David Ogden Stiers , it top notch, making this is an easy pick for and old pick. Luckily, it’s now streaming on YouTube for free for most of you. Highly recommended.