

Lost and barely worth finding

Lost In Space
A Film Review By Michael Redman
Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman

** (out of ****)

There are movies that are an artistic vision, struggle to get made and are
released without regard to public desires. Often these are the best films ever
made. And then there's "Lost In Space", the movie that pushed "Titanic" off
the top of the boxoffice.

Everything about this film appears calculated to make money. The
merchandising potential is obvious. Most characters look like potential action
figures. Many scenes seem to exist only to inspire video games. The rest are
toy designs.

The more subtle manipulation is an attempt to draw in every possible audience
segment. Baby Boomers will be attracted to nostalgia for the television
series. Twenty-somethings will follow "Friends" star Matt LeBlanc into the
theaters. Teens want to see zippy space ships and big explosions. Adolescents
have rebellious Penny Robinson to identify with. For the "Home Alone" crowd,
Will Robinson has become several years younger than he was on television.

While it's no sin to appeal to everyone, such a strategy serves to dilute the
product. Appealing to the lowest common denominators of several different
groups satisfies no one.

Earth of 2058 is in trouble. Man has trashed all of its natural resources and
needs another planet to use up. Professor John Robinson (William Hurt) is the
man with a plan. His hypergate will allow the population to instantly
transport to Alpha Prime, a hospitable planet millions of miles away. To
achieve this, he needs to take a 10-year trip there to construct a hypergate.

Seeing himself as a devoted family man although he is too busy to ever spend
time with them, he takes everyone along. Wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers),
biochemist daughter Judy (Heather Graham), reluctant daughter Penny (Lacey
Chabert) and boy-genius son Will (Jack Johnson) all suit up for the family
vacation of a lifetime. Military pilot Don West (LeBlanc) is assigned to get
them to where they are going safe and sound.

The plan falls through when Dr. Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman) is paid off by
the Global Sedition, a group dedicated to preventing the hypergate, to
sabotage their ship. Smith is betrayed by his employers and becomes an
unwilling stowaway.

When the damaged starcraft starts to fall into the sun, West shifts into
hyperspace to escape their imminent destruction. Unfortunately without a
hypergate, they have no control over where they go. Materializing in an
unknown area of the universe, they are -- you guessed it -- lost in space.

Based on the sixties television program (which in turn was apparently stolen
from the "Space Family Robinson" comic book), the film attempts to update the
30-year old series with mixed success.

The original had a number of problems itself. After the first few episodes
that were played somewhat seriously, the focus changed to "camp". Will, Dr.
Smith and the nameless robot fell into one silly situation after another each
week. Viewing the episodes decades after they first aired, they are
entertaining _because_ they are so goofy. Back then, they were frequently painful.

There's no intentional foolishness in the 1998 version. A few years before
the Millennium, we want our escapism dark. Dr. Smith is no longer merely
selfish, now he's purely evil as a lifestyle choice. The warm family relations
have given way to the dysfunctional family of the nineties. Professor Robinson
ignores his kids and his long-suffering wife. Penny is an angry pre-teen. Will
wants only his father's approval. Judy isn't much of anything. Even the robot
starts off as a destructive force.

All the nonsense in the film is apparently unwitting. The story is weak and
falls apart. The beginning half hour designed to establish the characters is
dull and they never become real people. The time-travel mysterious plot device
towards the end is supposed to contain surprises but doesn't. Supposedly the
family is lost, but no one appears to care about getting back home. Director
Stephen Hopkins ("Predator 2") doesn't deliver.

The acting is genuinely second-rate with rare exceptions. Hurt and Rogers are
both capable of superior performances, but don't seem to even try. Chabert has
an appealing punk appearance, but when she opens her mouth, her helium-powered
squeaky voice sounds as if it's been recorded at the wrong speed. Only Oldman
and Johnson show any acting chops.

Of course even the best actors can't do anything with a disastrous script.
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (responsible for that other calamity "Batman And
Robin") offers them nothing to work with.

With a record number of special effects, you'd expect that there would at
least be some eye candy. But, no. The deadly spiders are a joke. The alien
space-monkey that doesn't look like it exists in the same place as anything
else and has no function in the film. It might as well have been an
infomercial for a new toy...which is probably is.

Not everything is horrendous. There are a few bright spots. Will operates the
robot via a virtual reality set-up and it looks like someone for at least a
few minutes is having fun. The cameos by the original cast are fun although
presumably Billy Mumy (Will) is too busy with "Babylon 5" to show up. Dr.
Smith's cloaked incarnation is handled well but when he sheds the wrap, it's
the same ol' same ole.

Watching the closing credits is like experiencing a bad Sega game. I was so
convinced that the film only existed to inspire toys, that I stopped by the
theater lobby to see if the had a "Lost In Space" video game.  They didn't.
Not yet.

(As a teenager, Michael Redman, writer of this column for 23 years, never
would have believed that he could write these words: the "Lost In Space"
television series was better.)

[This appeared in the 4/8/98 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana.
Michael Redman can be contacted at [email-masked]]

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