ANYTHING WRONG WITH ‘MR. RIGHT’?

The movies can’t make up their mind about science, any more than the world can. For every selfless pioneer in a white coat, with a portrait of Madame Curie on his laboratory wall, the screen finds a platoon of mad experimenters, lusting for world domination or eternal life, or both, and accidentally mutating us into giant rats.

I had a little trouble with Susan Seidelman’s “Making Mr. Right,” mostly because I never met an android I really liked, or would trust for a nanosecond. And I go back at least to Pat Harrington in “The President’s Analyst,” playing an evil executive who turns out to be an android/robot.

John Malkovich as both the creator and his creation (which twin has the solenoid?) in “Making Mr. Right” is very winsome as both scientists and androids go, although they should sue their barber for that haircut, which made them look like bleached Igors on leave from “Frankenstein.”

But the amusement of Floyd Byars’ script was that this time the commentary was not about science at all (the premise was too nutty, even for sci-fi) but about feminism. Or, if not about feminism per se, about a certain combination of feminine drive and despair that finally makes a cuddly robot preferable to a warm, flawed, living male.

“Nobody’s perfect,” Joe E. Brown murmurs endearingly at the end of “Some Like It Hot.” “So he’s a machine; nobody’s perfect, and at least he won’t get in my way,” Ann Magnuson seems to be saying, endearingly, at the end of “Making Mr. Right.”

It is the ultimate declaration of independence, but in defense of those of us who have many failings but who are not subject to short circuits as such, I am bound to say that never has a triumph looked quite so much like a defeat.

As a matter of fact, I’m not entirely persuaded that “Making Mr. Right” ended up making precisely the statement that Byars had in mind.

Magnuson, as a hard-driving public relations executive, is surrounded by a surpassingly nerdy lot of men, and the strong suggestion is that the world has a terminal shortage of non-nerds. The women, it is true, are no vast improvement. They are characterized as sex-hungry, money-mad flakes with appalling taste, even when they choose among nerds. Seidelman’s view of her fellow persons is not encouraging.

A little more vulnerability in the heroine would have gone a long way toward making her plight a more compelling case for sympathy; vulnerability, or some sense that she could happily coexist with a good man as well as a toy.

But the film’s philosophy is “Stop the world, it’s time to start over,” preferably with a large assist from science, which will edit out all creative tensions, meaningful relationships and other distractions.

It does make for a chilly film, when only an android is capable of tenderness.

Science at its least tender and most destructive is on view in “Project X,” which opened Friday. The film is said to have been inspired by some Air Force experiments on the effects of high radiation (as after a nuclear blast) on the ability of pilots to function (as in combat).

Rhesus monkeys were being used in the actual experiments. In the film, the parts are played by chimpanzees (who are easier to train). As Kevin Thomas pointed out in his review, they are winsome and irresistible and there is a knowingness in their sad eyes that makes their fate a matter of great and painful suspense (relieved by great elation).

Lawrence Lasker and Walter Parkes co-authored “WarGames” and they co-produced “Project X,” whose story Lasker wrote with Stanley Weiser. The idea of war is, as before, the principal enemy, but the scientists who eagerly play the deadly games are in the enemy camp as well.

“Project X” was conceived, and generally succeeds very well, as a mainstream family entertainment, with Matthew Broderick a sympathetic lead and those ingenious chimps in support. Its final inventions are farcically far out, in a tradition closer to old Disney than new Fox, but they don’t entirely conceal the film’s hard edge.

While it takes no position on the philosophical question of animal experimentation, “Project X” comes down hard on the abuse of animals in experiments, and there’s little doubt the animal rights advocates have found a popular rallying point.