I.Q.

I.Q. is a delightful romantic comedy about Albert Einstein and his mischievous genius colleagues, Boris, Curtis and Nathan and how they try to play matchmaker for Cathrine, Einstein's niece. In this fictional account, Cathrine was entrusted into Einstein's care, years ago while a young girl, after both of her parents passed away. With her uncle as a big influence, she is quite the genius herself now, majoring in mathematics at Princeton University. She is engaged to be married to James Morlan, an animal behaviorist, whom Einstein and his friends refer to as the "Ratman". James is extremely intelligent but is just as equally boring. Albert and the boys decide that Cathrine really belongs with a mechanic at a local garage, Ed Walters, as he is more high spirited and fun loving. Ed is completely in love with Cathrine and would do anything to win her love. So Einstein and his cronies devise a very elaborate plan to make Cathrine believe that Ed is also a genius so that she will leave James and find true love with Ed. Through a comedy of errors, love finally prevails in the end.

  • Starring: Meg Ryan, Tim Robbins and Walter Mattheu
  • Director(s): Fred Schepisi
  • Producer(s): Paramount Pictures
  • Screenwriter(s): Andy Breckman, Andy Breckman
  • Animal Coordinator: Unknown
  • Release Date: Wednesday, November 16, 1994

Featured Animal Action

Animal action is limited to three scenes in which rats and monkeys are seen in James' laboratory. In the first scene rats are merely seen in cages. In the second scene James is showing Albert an experiment he is doing with one of the rats. The rat has a featherweight fake helmet on his head with two little fake diodes and wires connected to it. He supposedly receives food by pushing down one lever or a sexual stimuli by pushing the other lever. The rat had been trained to step on the levers by his trainer and did so following verbal cues with food as a reward. In the third scene involving animals, Boris, Curtis and Nathan arrive at James' laboratory with the intention of detaining him from meeting with Cathrine. They proceed to unlatch all of the cages containing the monkeys and rats, letting all the animals run loose in the lab, causing temporary chaos. For this, the filming area was closed off, not allowing any of the animals to wander out of the small area. In this scene James tries to catch the wandering rats. Curtis picks up two of the rats by the tail, holding them up for a few seconds before setting them back down. The rats were under no discomfort or stress. However, by mixing up the rats, one of James' experiments is ruined. At the same time, his assistant tries to gather the loose monkeys. One of the monkeys grabs hold of the assistant's skirt and pulls her out of camera range. For this the monkey had been trained by his handler to hold the woman's skirt and lead her off camera. The monkey responded to verbal commands with food as a reward. The other animals were simply allowed to mill around the room at will for this short scene and then were retrieved by their trainers after the scene was completed.