The Man with Two Brains

The Man with Two Brains is a 1983 American comedy film directed by Carl Reiner and written by Reiner, Steve Martin, and George Gipe, in which Martin plays Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr, a celebrated brain surgeon who marries a gold-digging femme fatale and then falls in love with a disembodied, telepathic brain in a laboratory jar.¹ It was produced by Aspen Film Society and released by Warner Bros. on June 3, 1983.²

Production

Plans for the film were reported in February 1982 by Martin, producers David V. Picker and William E. McEuen, writer George Gipe, and writer-director Carl Reiner; Reiner expressed a desire to shoot in Vienna, Austria.⁴ Principal photography began on July 5 or 6, 1982, using locations in the Los Angeles area along with The Burbank Studios, Universal Studios, and Laird International Studios in Culver City, where the "Castle Hundredreck" condominium set was built on two soundstages over two months by forty-five crewmembers working fifty hours per week.⁴

According to production notes in American Film Institute library files, the film marked the third collaboration between Martin, Picker, McEuen, Gipe, and Reiner.⁴ Reiner stated in 1983 that the screenplay was originally conceived by Martin, who wanted to lampoon one of his favorite films, Donovan's Brain (1953); both Reiner and Gipe were initially opposed to the idea.⁴ The science-fiction encyclopedia entry describes the result as a spoof of the disembodied-brain Gothic tradition of Donovan's Brain, and reviewers have placed it in the same lineage, alongside Frankenstein and femme fatale melodramas.^{8 • 9}

The film runs 93 minutes according to box-office records, while the AFI Catalog lists 90 minutes and the science-fiction encyclopedia notes a cut to 86 minutes.^{2 • 1 • 8}

Release and box office

Warner Bros. released the film wide on June 3, 1983 in 1,203 theaters.² It opened at number 4 with a weekend gross of $3,498,931, 33.8% of its eventual total, and finished with a domestic gross of $10,353,438, all of it domestic, with no recorded international gross.² Inflation-adjusted, that total corresponds to about $37.2 million.² Rotten Tomatoes lists a theatrical release date of November 18, 1983, which conflicts with the June 3, 1983 date given by the AFI Catalog and box-office records.^{10 • 1 • 2}

Carl Reiner later said his peers loved the film at screenings, but the audience was less receptive: it opened opposite Return of the Jedi and Superman III and, in his words, "died a quick death."¹¹ Reiner and Martin immediately made another film together, All of Me (1984), his fourth collaboration with Martin.¹¹

Reception

The film holds a 79% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes from 24 reviews, with the critics consensus reading, "As spastically uneven as its zany title suggests, The Man with Two Brains isn't peak Steve Martin, but it's still often close enough to enjoy."¹⁰ Metacritic assigns it a Metascore of 61 from 9 reviews, and its IMDb rating is 6.4/10 from about 30,000 ratings.^{5 • 12}

Individual reviews ranged widely. Richard Schickel, writing in Time, called it "the most assured and hilarious of the three Martin-Carl Reiner collaborations" (90); TV Guide Magazine scored it 88, and Variety called it "a fitfully amusing return by Steve Martin to the broad brand of lunacy that made his first feature, The Jerk, so successful" (70).¹³ Roger Ebert gave it 2 out of 4 stars, writing that it is "not a great comedy but it has scenes that don't know that," while also noting that he found himself laughing a fair amount of the time.^{10 • 13} Pauline Kael of The New Yorker praised Martin's performance, writing that "the performance is shameless, stupid fun."¹⁴ The Washington Post's 1983 review described the film as an "ultra-silly, slapstick, slapdash, shamelessly crass and tacky take-off" combining Frankenstein's Daughter, Dr. Kildare, and Donovan's Brain on a Vienna honeymoon.¹⁵

Legacy

The film is remembered as part of Reiner's 1980s run of comedies with Martin, which began with The Jerk (1979).³ Time highlighted its joke about unpronounceable names, occasioned by the meeting of Dr. Hfuhruhurr and Anne Uumellmahaye, as one of the greatest ever on that subject.³ Later retrospective commentary has called it one of Martin's most underappreciated films and his only science-fiction movie.¹⁴

References

1. The Man with Two Brains (1983), AFI Catalog of Feature Films
2. The Man with Two Brains (1983), Box Office and Financial Information, The Numbers
3. Carl Reiner Was Funny. But His Greatest Gift Was Letting Others Shine, TIME
4. The Man with Two Brains (1983), AFI Catalog, History section
5. The Man with Two Brains (1983), The Film Index
6. The Man with Two Brains, Full Cast & Crew, TV Guide
7. The Man with Two Brains details, Metacritic
8. Man with Two Brains, The, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
9. The Man with Two Brains | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere
10. The Man With Two Brains, Rotten Tomatoes
11. The Big Transplant, The Washington Post (November 24, 1983)
12. The Man with Two Brains (1983), Ratings, IMDb
13. The Man with Two Brains (1983), Metacritic reviews via IMDb
14. Steve Martin's Only Sci-Fi Movie Is A Classic That Roger Ebert Begrudgingly Complimented, BGR
15. Steve Martin: Wild and Wacky, The Washington Post (June 2, 1983)

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Comedy horror films › 20th-century comedy horror films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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