DIRECTOR
Stephen Hopkins
SCREENWRITER
Akiva Goldsman
based
on characters created by
Irwin Allen
PRODUCERS
Carla Fry
Akiva Goldsman
Stephen Hopkins
Mark W. Koch
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Peter Levy
MUSIC
Bruce Broughton
EDITOR
Ray Lovejoy
CAST
William Hurt (John Robinson)
Mimi Rogers (Maureen Robinson)
Heather Graham (Judy Robinson)
Lacey Chabert (Penny Robinson)
Jack Johnson (Will Robinson)
Gary Oldman (Zachary Smith)
Matt LeBlanc (Don West)
Jared Harris (Older Will Robinson)
Gary Hecker (Blarp's voice)
MPAA rating: PG-13
Running
time: 130m
U.S. release: April 3, 1998
Video availability: VHS - DVD
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Having
never seen the old TV series Lost in Space, I had no preconceptions
of how the new movie version "should have been done"
and am free to judge it independently on its merits as a movie.
Having now seen the film, I have many ideas about how it should
have been done. How about ... intelligently? Perhaps with some
wit and originality? A little less dependence on CGI effects
and a little more attention to the script? A single moment that
doesn't seem pitched to slow ten-year-olds? Movies like Lost
in Space are routinely defended as "just fun,"
but when did "fun" become synonymous with "bland"
and "shallow"?
We're in 2038, when the Earth is in trouble: In another twenty
years, the planet won't be able to support human life. So the
plan is to ship everyone to another human-friendly planet, Alpha
Prime (and presumably ruin that planet too). Professor John Robinson
(William Hurt) will lead the way, taking his family with him.
The premise of both the show and the movie is that the Robinsons'
ship gets knocked off course, leading to many episodes of well-loved
TV adventures.
The problem with the movie -- well, one among many -- is that
it adopts the episodic structure of a Lost in Space marathon
on the Sci-Fi Channel. The characters -- also including the macho
pilot Don West (Matt LeBlanc) and the evil stowaway Dr. Zachary
Smith (Gary Oldman) -- go from one damn crisis to another, and
the episodes don't build on each other; we don't feel that the
heroes are in a situation beyond their control, but rather that
the filmmakers are running to catch up with a big movie beyond
their control. The film is like an unguided missile.
Lost in Space was directed by Stephen Hopkins, a solid
action craftsman (he made The Ghost and the Darkness and
the underrated Judgment Night). Hopkins keeps things moving,
and a couple of the space-chase sequences have an adrenalized
lift to them. But the movie keeps crashing into clichés
-- those being the specialty of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman,
who worked on the last two terrible Batman
entries. Seasoned moviegoers will find much here to roll their
eyes at, whether it's the tired device of the absentee dad (Professor
Robinson is always missing out on his son's milestones) or the
introduction of an allegedly cute critter named Blarp, who makes
the movie seem even more like a two-hour toy commercial.
The casting splits you down the middle -- you don't know whether
to be grateful that you at least have good actors to watch, or
to regret that they're given nothing to do. The idea of Gary
Oldman as Dr. Smith promises more diabolical fun than you get;
this is one of his very rare dull performances, weighed down
by a script that doesn't let him take off. The Robinson children
are non-entities: Judy (Heather Graham) is defined almost entirely
by her Princess Leia-Han Solo hostile banter with Don West, Will
(Jack Johnson) is a little techno-geek, and Penny (Lacy Chabert
of Party of Five) is like Sarah Michelle Gellar's less
talented kid sister. Mimi Rogers, who has been impressive elsewhere
(The Rapture), is yet another wife telling her man to
be careful; she could start by telling him to wake up -- Hurt
sleepwalks toward the paycheck being dangled in front of him,
as he did in Dark
City.
The climax is some nonsense involving a "time bubble,"
which is really a code name for a gimmick useful to desperate
screenwriters. Lost in Space is so full of time bubbles
it's practically effervescent, and the ending is left so arrogantly
unresolved that I sat stunned for a moment until I realized --
Of course! They're leaving it open for a sequel! Lost in Space
is so witless that it never answers the major question raised
by both the TV show and the movie: When the Robinsons find Dr.
Smith aboard the ship, why don't they just shoot him in the head
and get it over with? "Because then there wouldn't be a
movie," you may say. Well, so what? |