A Nobel Laureate biologist at a well-endowed West Coast university has, in his backyard laboratory, cultivated the cells of his dead wife for thirty years, with the ultimate intention to clone her. Plainly, this situation cinches up the traditional connection between Mad Scientist and God, and indeed it is hard to recall any movie, even when Biblical epics were in vogue, in which the latter entity is mentioned by name more often. The painful process by which the scientist comes to decide against playing God and settle for being a mere human (and, if not quite a full-fledged creator, at any rate a father) is full of authentic pathos. But though the movie is happiest in the pathetic vein, it spends much time poking around in other veins -- student romance, intra-faculty rivalry -- and with much less success. Even more damaging, because more truly crucial to the central conceit, is the characterization of the free spirit and self-diagnosed "nymphomaniac" who first volunteers as guinea pig in the cloning experiment and then volunteers (unbidden) for full service in the scientist's personal life. Never mind that Mariel Hemingway is a painfully stiff, constrained, self-conscious performer, outside, of course, of her constant readiness to flash those coconut-shell breasts. Even with a more suitable actress, the character as written never establishes herself as a credible rival to the long-remembered wife, never as anything more than a twittering lark. And what we are left with is the precious but undeveloped cell of an idea, like those of the dead wife, ultimately diluted with an ocean of irrelevance. Peter O'Toole, Vincent Spano, Virginia Madsen; directed by Ivan Passer. (1985) — Duncan Shepherd