The Man With Two Brains

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German Detective: "You're playing God!" Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr: "Somebody's got to!"

A 1983 comedy film starring Steve Martin as Dr. Michael Hfuhruhurr (it's pronounced exactly how it's spelled), a brilliant but arrogant neurosurgeon newly married to a monstrous gold-digging Black Widow (Kathleen Turner), who belatedly meets and falls in love with his soulmate, Anne Uumellmahaye (Sissy Spacek) whose one tiny defect is that she's a disembodied brain in a jar. Hfuhruhurr naturally attempts to find a body into which to transplant her. Hilarity Ensues. (No, really!)

Like all of Martin's early movie work, it's pretty much gag-a-minute, with two particular highlights being Hfuhruhurr facing the world's strictest drunk-driving test, and the identity of The Elevator Killer.

Tropes used in The Man With Two Brains include:

• And I Must Scream: Since she lacks a body, let alone sensory organs, Anne can't see, hear, feel, or sense anything at all aside from Hfuhruhurr's voice. It's no small miracle she remained sane! Now consider all the brains Necessiter keeps in jars...
• Bigger On the Inside: Dr. Necessiter's apartment.
• Black Widow: Dolores.
• Brain In A Jar: Lots of them.
• The Cameo: Merv Griffin as himself, who turns out to be the Elevator Killer.
• Cargo Ship: A good and long part of the movie involves Hfuhruhurr trying to be romantic with Anne's Brain In A Jar, including taking her rowing and putting wax lips on the glass. It all stays PG, though.
• Came Back Wrong: Necessiter's previous attempts to resurrect a brain-in-a-jar in a new living body. He probably shouldn't have tried to transplant a brilliant doctor into a gorilla...
• Cloudcuckoolander: Dr. Hfuhruhurr.
• Companion Cube: Hfuhruhurr carries around a little Barbie doll representing his first, deceased wife, and often speaks to it as though it were really her. Anne's jar could also qualify.
• Convenient Coma: After Hfuhruhurr nearly dies in the transplant procedure, he spends enough time in coma for Anne to get back on her feet in Dolores' body.
• Cute but Cacophonic: A prostitute that Hfuhruhurr tried to kill so Anne could have her body.
• Dead Man Writing
• Evilutionary Biologist: Necessiter, though his experiments are solely For Science!! instead of any actual evil, and he's completely unaware that (at least some of) his brains are still fully conscious.
• Femme Fatale: Dolores to the point of (intentional) parody.
• Fun With Foreign Languages
• Fun With Subtitles
• Gold Digger: Dolores, with a vengeance.
• A God Am I: Hfuhruhurr gets a wee bit unhinged when in the midst of Anne's transplant procedure, trying to stop the police from interfering. When accused of playing God, he replies, "Somebody has to!"
• Groin Attack: Hfuhruhurr does this to Dolores while they scuffle. He nails her right in the balls.
• Heel Realization: Hfuhruhurr very nearly kills an innocent woman to use her body. He realizes he can't do it in the nick of time.
• Homage: Donovan's Brain. It's Dr. Hfuhruhurr's favorite film, too.
• Insufferable Genius
• Love Makes You Evil: Or at least willing to kill.
• Little Professor Dialog
• Mad Scientist: ...several. Necessiter is only the most obvious one.
• Mindlink Mates: Hfuhruhurr and Anne, natch. Why they share this Psychic Link is never explained.
• The Mourning After: Hfuhruhurr for his first wife.
• Ms. Fanservice: Dolores, again, it's parodied. She's so hot, in a deleted scene she makes a bellhop instantly go through puberty.
• N-Word Privileges: Parodied when Dolores growls at Hfuhruhurr, "I'll get you for this, you nigger kike wop!"
• Non-Fatal Explosions: Combined with Soft Water.
• Ramming Always Works: The Viennese police ask Necessiter's neighbor for a battering ram to break into the doctor's apartment, and get one. Through a series of errors, they ram all the way across and fly out the building into a pool.
• Right Through the Wall: Necessiter's awesome apartment has "stone walls" made of paper. His butler even punches through one to demonstrate. He does not get along well with his neighbors.
• Selective Obliviousness: Hfuhruhurr never sees, or unwittingly chooses not to see, that Dolores is cheating on him with nearly every male she comes across.
• Serial Killer: The Elevator Killer, who injects window cleaner into his victims.
• Sorry Ociffer: Dr Hfuhruhurr is stopped by a traffic cop while attending a conference in Austria; when asked if he has been drinking, he replies "No, I dron't dink... don't drink".
• Switch to English: Dr. Hfuhruhurr gets pulled over by a German-speaking policeman. When he replies to the policeman in English, the policeman says, "Oh, you speak English! Good!" and directs his partner to turn off the subtitles.
• Talking to The Dead: Hfuhruhurr asks the soul of his departed former wife for a little sign, even the smallest sign, that she disapproves his marriage to Dolores. After the entire house shakes and spectral voices wail "NOOOOOO!" and short out the lights for a minute or two, he decides that not getting even a little sign from her means she's OK with it.
  • Later, he's slightly upset that she didn't give him any warning.
• The Unpronounceable: "Hfuhruhurr." Various characters take unsuccessful stabs at it, though the doctor claims it's pronounced exactly as it's spelled. He pronounces it "Hoff-hhhhaaarrrrrr." Anne Uumellmahaye is another example, though her name is pronounced more or less how it's spelled: "Uuuuhhhh-mell-muh-hay." The fact that they can both pronounce each other's names perfectly on the first attempt is a sign that they're soulmates.