Subject: Review: Lost in Space (1998)

From: Jon Popick <[email-masked]>
Date: 22 Oct 1999 06:20:41 GMT

PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com

Imagine countries from around the world, united together in building an
expensive hunk of space crap to send people into a previously uncharted
world to help save all of humanity.  The voyage is quickly sabotaged and
ultimately ruined by a maniacal crackpot.  No, I’m not talking about
Contact or even The Real World 9.  This is the big screen version of the
campy 60’s television series, Lost in Space.

It all happens in the year 2058, a year which finds our planet on the
verge of environmental ruin.  There is no clean water to drink and
fossil fuels are practically non-existent.  Our only saving grace is in
the distant planet, Alpha Prime, which has a similar climate and whatnot
to Earth.  The plan (called The Jupiter Project) is to blast the
Robinson family off on a ten-year journey to Alpha Prime, where they
will build a transport back to earth, thusly making future travel much
quicker.

Sounds easy?  It probably would have been if it weren’t for the meddling
Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman, The Fifth Element).  He sneaks aboard the
Robinson craft in an attempt to reprogram the ship’s robot to destroy
the mission.  But, in the biggest example of intergalactic irony since
Heston saw the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes, Smith
ends up a stowaway aboard the now undermined vessel.  Jesus, that almost
sounded like a Dennis Miller line.

After the Earth family Robinson retreat to their sleep pods, the robot
comes to life, destroys all navigational systems and a bunch of other
very crucial things before it’s stopped in one of the most harrowing
robot-gone-out-of-control scenes since Robocop.  It’s too late to save
the mission as the ship has been thrown way off course.

Of course, the Robinson family is too damn resourceful to give up that
easily.  They seemed too perfectly assembled, kind of like the cast of
The A-Team.  Each one is an expert in something, but I can’t remember
what they all were.  Actually, my memory became rather hazy after I saw
Judy Robinson (Heather Graham, Boogie Nights) in her gleefully tight
spacesuit.  (Editor’s Note: If you would like to see more of the woman
that PLANET SICK-BOY has named “The Most Beautiful American Actress -
1997”, watch her eat up the screen in Two Girls and a Guy)

I do remember that there is a really cool scene where the ship goes into
hyper-drive.  And I remember being really pissed of about a CG monkey
that they found on an abandoned craft.  I also remember that the picture
seemed about forty minutes too long, but I don’t remember caring.

Writer Akiva Goldsman, occasionally a capable adapter of John Grisham
books (The Client, A Time to Kill) but primarily the dunderhead who
ruined the Batman franchise, has crafted a likeable story that’s a bit
long in the tooth, but doesn’t frivolously waste valuable screen time
(save the stupid monkey).  Big kudos to Production Designer Norman
Garwood (Brazil) for making one of the coolest spaceships ever.

Of the actors, TV’s Joey (Matt LeBlanc, Friends) and Claudia (Lacey
Chabert, Party of Five) stand out in the only roles that stray from the
usual casting.  There were also supposed to be a bunch of cameos from
people who were in the original TV series, but I’m way too young to have
ever seen it, so I don’t know who they were.