"I am NOT an insect! I am a human being! I... AM... A... MAN!"

Rating: 8/10 (26 April 2004)

Contains Spoilers!! That's what I kept expecting Jeff Goldblum to yell when he started turning into the fly.
Anyway, in this uniquely perverse remake of the 1950s cult classic, Jeff Goldblum plays Seth Brundle, brilliant but lonely mad scientist who suffers from motion sickness and has five sets of the same suit so that he doesn't have to waste time thinking about what he'll wear. And for a guy who's supposed to be a nerd, he has quite the physique, as someone else around here has already pointed out.
While attending a science fair exhibit funded by his company, Seth meets a beautiful science magazine reporter/journalist named Veronica (Geena Davis, Jeff's ex-wife). After Seth strikes up a conversation with Veronica he tries to impress her by showing her his latest invention - telepods for teleporting things back and forth, an idea he coined up so that he could avoid getting car sick. You can imagine how many times Veronica's been hit on with the line "I'm working on something that'll change the world as we know it," but in Seth's case he can back it up with his pods. Veronica initially mocks his pods but then he transports her pantyhose through the thing and she believes. Unfortunately, Seth overlooked the fact that as a journalist Veronica will naturally try to write an article about the pods and he begs her not to write anything because the pods aren't perfected yet. At this point, the pods can only transport non-living things, it can't do things that are alive, as he later shows when he tries to teleport a baboon with tragic results. Fortunately Veronica's editor and ex-boyfriend Stathis Borans (John Getz) initially scoffs at Seth as a con man, which works out great for Seth because he makes Veronica an offer she can't refuse: chronicle his experiments and she can write a whole book about it once he gets the pods to work. Veronica eventually succumbs to the nerdy charms of Seth and the two have a torrid love affair. After sleeping together and experimenting a little bit with a steak, Seth theorizes that he needs to reprogram the pods to look at living things differently. Seth irons the bugs out while Veronica, in a gesture of romantic affection, buys Seth a brown leather jacket along with some other clothes to add variety to his wardrobe and when she comes back Seth manages to teleport another baboon without killing it. S&V plan to have a little romantic get away but their planning is interrupted when Veronica goes to confront Stathis about his plans to exploit Seth for all he's worth when she finds a magazine cover with her name on it sent to Seth's place (Stathis did a little background check and realized that Seth's no joke). In stereotypical man behavior, Seth drinks himself jealous and tests the telepods on himself, unaware that there's a fly in the machine. After teleporting, Seth looks the same but there's something different: he's suddenly a super athlete capable of having sex for hours on end! He's also become more emotionally exuberant, which = a bad temper.
Believing that the pods has improved him, Seth becomes unreasonably angry when Veronica refuses to let him teleport her and goes out and cheats on her in hopes of finding a girl who is willing to become part of the "Dynamic Duo Club". Veronica also notices weird hairs growing out of Seth's back and when she gets them analyzed, turns out they're not human. Seth refuses to believe anything's wrong and angrily throws her out, only to finally realize that something's wrong when he looks in the mirror, notices how ugly he suddenly is and his finger nails start falling out along with some nasty substance. Seth double checks things on the computer and finds out about the fly that was in the pod when he teleported himself.
After 4 weeks alone, Seth calls Veronica and she sees him turning into a hideous zombie spewing fly vomit in order to eat and stuff like his ear falling off. He explains a bout the fly and how the pods didn't know what to do with the two different DNA structures so it spliced them together, meaning he's turning into a giant bug! As the mutation continues, Seth's emotional state wildly bounces back and forth from scared/horrified to crazy fascination ("The Life & Times of Brundlefly... it should make a great children's book."), as shown when he gleefully demonstrates his fly table manners. Stathis himself doesn't realize the depth of things until he sees the tape of Seth eating. Then it gets worse - Veronica's pregnant with Seth's kid!
Fearing what the child may be when its born, she tries to get an abortion after failing to tell Seth (who now looks like the Toxic Avenger, as someone else pointed out) the truth but he comes after her and kidnaps her from the hospital and begs her not to kill their child as it could be the last of his old self. Stathis comes to Seth's place literally gunning for him and finds out about the only cure Seth could find: fuse himself with another human being. Seth attacks Stathis and Stathis tries to shoot him but he is no match for super-fly (Superman-fly?) and gets his hand and foot melted off. Seth tells Veronica that he has to fuse her to him in order to save himself but when she struggles to keep out of the pod she knocks his jaw off and the last of Seth's old body falls apart as he turns into a giant bug. Stathis manages to shoot the door so Veronica can get out and tries to trap "Brundlefly" in the other pod, but when B-fly tries to escape, the pods teleport it and it exchanges its legs with rods. The last bit of Seth left in the monster asks Veronica to [mercy] kill him by touching the shotgun to its head. Veronica complies and the movie ends with her weeping for her dead lover after blowing his head off.
Never was there a tale of more woe than of Veronica and her Seth, oh...
Director David Cronenberg said the film wasn't so much a metaphor for AIDS (though I can see how people might feel that way, as Jeff literally falls to pieces) but more a metaphor for aging, that we all become monsters as we deteriorate. I'll never look at Jeff Goldblum the same way again (Brundle-Fly is permanently fused in my memory) but he turns in a heart breaking performance as the ill-fated scientist. He really got my sympathy going when he delivered lines like "The baby could be all that's left of the real me... please don't kill me." Geena Davis is also good as his lover. Not for all audiences.