As the credits begin we read: "A Serious Film."
But before you believe that, consider that what it really means is this is a "Yahoo Serious Film!"
If you've never heard of Yahoo Serious, join the club. But soon that name may be as familiar as Paul Hogan.
Serious is the star/director/writer/co-producer of "Young Einstein," the latest in Australian film imports and the movie that may break the "Airplane!" record for anachronisms.
Apparently taking place in some parallel universe, "Young Einstein" is set in 1905 and begins in Tasmania, the island off the coast of Australia.
Young Albert Einstein (Serious) can't seem to get the hang of working on his parents' apple farm, though his mother and father try to encourage him. Eventually he reveals himself to be "a scientist," inventing the theory of relativity for the purpose of putting bubbles in beer and turning his classical violin into an electric guitar, inventing "roll and rock."
When he travels to Sydney to patent his theory he encounters his first love, Marie Curie (Odile Le Clezio), along with the corrupt head of the patent office, Preston Preston (John Howard).
Einstein gets a room in a cheap hotel, where the local prostitutes woo him to no avail, and soon Preston has stolen Einstein's theory for the purpose of making money from a new brewery. To get Einstein out of the way he has him placed in an insane asylum.
But that hardly seems any different from the world at large in this film.
Ultimately, at a climax set at the Science Academy Awards in Paris, Serious uses rock 'n' roll to save the day. Among the guests are Darwin, Edison, Freud, Marconi and the Wright Brothers. (But "Young Einstein," of course, owes more to the spirit of the Marx Brothers.)
This film is nothing if not off the wall, and how you respond may depend entirely on how funny you find that kind of humor. And how much you enjoy Serious' own charm, a boyish goof with wild hair. (My kids, ranging in age from 8 to 16, all loved it.)
My favorite moments were the throwaway bits, such as Mother Einstein knitting directly from a live sheep, Albert's habit of taking a single bite of an apple and throwing it over his shoulder and, in a scene water-conservationists should love, washing dishes in his own bathwater.
And just in case there's any doubt that this is all like a live-action Warner Bros. cartoon, there's a little "Tasmanian Devil" wandering around that is for all the world just like the one that used to terrorize Bugs Bunny.
Though there are draggy moments, some of this is very funny.
But then I liked "Pee-wee's Big Adventure," too.
"Young Einstein" is rated PG, but there's nothing that's really offensive — not the prostitutes that Einstein innocently rebuffs, not the nude backsides of male inmates in the asylum and not the brief moment of Marie starting to undress for bed. None of these things lasts very long before Serious is doing a pratfall to make you forget them.