

To quote the great philosopher and poet, Gil Scott-Heron:
"...the fact is, this country wants nostalgia. They want to go back as
far as they can . . . even if it's only as far as last week! Not to face
now or tomorrow but to face backwards."

   This was his criticism of America's and the Reagan administration's
preoccupation with returning to the 1950's. Glorious days of
unambiguous morals, two parent families, innocent chaste virtue, and
whites-only drinking fountains.
     I'd say that in the Clinton years our stalker-like obsession with
nostalgia has ebbed somewhat. Don't believe me?  Just look at how
fewer movies produced today are based on old tv shows as opposed to
before. Huh? Huh? ...
....Of course, um  . . .  that's also likely to be because the vein's
been pretty well tapped. I mean.  You can't deny the barrel's being
pretty well scraped when the latest two projects are Mr.Magoo and LOST
IN SPACE.

    Don't give me that face, you and I both know that Lost In Space was
not a good show. Oh, it was certainly likeable, entertaining,
and definitely a lot of fun. Like the 60's Batman show, I didn't
appreciate its humor until I was older, and I admire that it predates
Star
Trek, but I'm still not gonna say it was "good."
   Let's face it, Lost In Space was the science fiction equivalent of
Gilligan's Island-
1) Every week the cast struggled to get back home.
2) Every week their plan was monkey-wrenched by the same member that got
them in their fix in the first place.
3) Every week you were left with the question: Not "Will they ever get
home?", but "Why don't they just kill Gilligan/ Dr.Smith?!"
    Of course, the obvious answer was that without Dr.Smith there was no
reason to watch the show.  Jonathan Harris (the actor)
turned a character that was originally supposed to be killed off in the
third episode into one of the great cowardly, comedic, effeminate
villain archetypes of all time . . . Possibly inspiring the character
that got BRAVEHEART picketed.
   BUT ENOUGH of my esoteric rambling, you want to know about LOST IN
SPACE the movie:

    The first thing you probably want to know is whether it's campy like
the tv show or not. Well, as you probably gathered from the
trailers it is serious . . . but before you exhale let me say, that's
not always a good thing. In fact, the movie is filled with many such
dichotomies and double-edged swords. For instance, the conceptual
artists did a fantastic job of designing everything and updating the
characters. A good 40% of the movie IS computer graphics which are all
Bee-Yoo-Tee-ful! ...Unfortunately, they look unrealistic, to
the point of distraction. Similar to looking at the panoramic shots in
TITANIC or a poorly done breast augmentation.

    It's the year 2058 and the Robinson Family blast off in the Jupiter
2 for Alpha Centauri in search of an inhabitable world, preferably
in less than twenty years when the earth will no longer be liveable. The
ship is secretly sabotaged by the traitorous Dr. Zachary Smith
who doesn't make it off before lift off. He's unable to abort his plan
and the ship is thrown way off course. The crew is lost in space.
Just like in the show.

   This first half does a nice job of fleshing out these concepts. The
script isn't great but it shows lots of potential, like so many
Hollywood movies do . . . until the third act, where most of them fall
apart. Simultaneously, as the Jupiter2 is attacked so does the
story find it's structural integrity compromised.
    The true "hull breach" comes at 55 minutes into the movie when the
crew discovers and adopts a very "cute"ewok/ snarf /abu-like
alien and are attacked by a swarm of unconvincing computer-generated
spiders. The plot then turns into more of a comic book- and
for those of you who actually read comics and know how good some of them
can be, I meant that in the way the general public
thinks of "comic books." Think $.25 bins, circa 1978.
   We're treated to such pseudoscience as equipment made of adamnatium
(a metal which I assure you only exists in Marvel comics)
and flying through the sun at warp speed making you travel forward in
time . . . Don't get me started on the time travel issues. There's
more than enough other plot holes to go around. I guarantee that if you
go see this before the end of the film you'll notice everyone in
the theater turn to each other looking puzzled.
   Had the movie not gone the serious route some of these things
might've worked. Alas . . .

    But really, who cares about the story? It's the characters that made
Lost In Space! What about the characters?
...Hmmn . . .
...Really, most of the dialog was too bad for the actors to transcend
the material and they leave you with no lasting impression,
including the robot.
    Gary Oldman does a decent enough Dr.Smith. After years of stinking
up other movies (THE PROFESSIONAL, THE FIFTH
ELEMENT, AIR FORCE ONE) with his one-note, over-the-top portrayal of
villains, here he's given the perfect venue. Amazingly, he
shows a restraint which makes his Dr.Smith more potent, almost scary. As
the movie's second hour spins out of control he slips in
more of the classic "Smith-isms" but by this time it's too little too
late. Jonathan Harris retains his title.

    The only performances that really stuck out we're those of Matt
LeBlanc and William Hurt, who I now have a new respect for. He
breathed alot of life into the character of John Robinson, making him
more like Reed Richards. I completely felt him as a
work-obsessed father/husband/ scientific genius who had his life on the
back burner for the last three years while he worked on a
project to try to save the earth. Next to the artists he's the best
thing in the movie. I respect him even more for not wearing a
hairpiece.

    On the flip side there's Matt LeBlanc as Maj. Don West . . . and his
performance stood out for the exact opposite reason.
     From the old show Don West was my favorite character (next to
Dr.Smith, of course). I'm sure to most of you he was just the
studly guy who was Judy's (the oldest daughter) boyfriend. To me he was
cool because he was the only one who wasn't fooled by or
tolerant of Dr.Smith. I lived for those moments when he'd get fed up,
grab Smith by the collar and beg John to let him go out back
and work him over. Surrounded by big brains he was the only one with
common sense. It's a damn shame that Matt was so cringingly
bad.
    Matt's character on FRIENDS is my favorite character on the show,
but he proves that his range extends no farther than that 30
minutes. His portrayal of Don West consists of nothing more than holding
his arms out to his sides, talking in a deep voice and reciting
his lines as if he was filling in for a sick friend. It doesn't help
that he has the worst dialog in the movie (especially in the scenes he
shares with Heather Graham) but I never got the impression he could do
more if it'd been better.

   The only other character of note is "Blarp" the aforementioned cutesy
comic-relief alien. He's the kind of character that's annoying to
everybody except kids too young to be admitted into the movie in the
first place. He was most likely put in as a harkening back to
Debbie The Bloop ( a chimp with fake long ears) from the original
series.  If you don't remember "Debbie" it's because she was
discreetly yanked after two episodes... with good reason.
    Adding insult to injury, Blarp's completely computer generated and
resembles a cross between a muppet and the HoneyCombs
cereal's mascot. He's only slightly less annoying than Lacey Chabert's
voice- which sounds EXACTLY like she snorted helium
between each take (How is anyone able to sit through an entire episode
of PARTY OF FIVE?).
‘"Oh, the pain!!"

-MARTIN

--
This week: LOST IN SPACE
PLUS! We're celebrating the one year
anniversary of me and Brian being on the show!

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