As a kid growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, one of my favorite things to do (beyond tormenting my older sister) was to watch "Lost in Space." Seen through prepubescent eyes, the show was admittedly silly, but I -- like most other kids my age -- loved the drama, suspense, and especially the robot with those cool electrical charges "he" could emit from those metallic pincers.
My next door neighbor, Lar, even went so far as to build an amazing scale model of the "Jupiter II," complete with an opening hatch door, all from nothing more than two heavy duty paper plates (In this day and age of computer games and gadgets, today's kids won't appreciate that low tech fun).
Looking back now from the perspective of an adult, however, the show was obviously pretty absurd, what with the papier-mâché boulders, ludicrously goofy costumes, and awful plots. Even so, the musical compositions were good (from a young "Johnny" Williams -- who later went on to score, oh, about a gazillion movies), there was a guest appearance by Robby the Robot (from "Forbidden Planet") and at least the first few episodes of the series were meant to be taken seriously. Then for whatever reason, the show turned goofy, ran for only a few seasons, and was then canceled to spend the rest of eternity in syndicated reruns.
With fond memories of the show stemming from my childhood, I went into the screening of New Line Cinema's big budget, big screen adaption of the TV series hoping that they'd do it some justice. Unfortunately, it appears that director Stephen Hopkins ("The Ghost And The Darkness," "Blown Away") and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman ("Batman and Robin," "A Time To Kill") were themselves lost in some sort of space when they put this clunker together.
While the film features some spectacular special effects and a few decent sequences, the producers should have spent some of the film's millions on getting a decent, gripping story, for this turns out to be one lackluster film. Not even the effects nor the impressive cast can keep this picture from being anything but a whole lot of nothing. Expect decent initial box office returns for the reminiscence factor, but a quick drop off once word of mouth gets out.
The story essentially sticks to the initial plot from the series' pilot and then throws in bits and pieces from various episodes in an attempt to please fans of the series. The Robinson family, however, isn't the homogenous nuclear unit featured so prominently in the TV show. I suppose the outlook regarding family life in the 1960's about the 1990's was a bit more optimistic than our view of the future in the 2050's.
Even so, the dysfunctional family story is a transparent plot device where you know that events will take place that will (hopefully) make you feel good once the family bonds back together again into one happy clan (there's actually even a "Goodnight" scene taken directly from the old "Waltons" TV show). I don't know about you, but if the future of mankind was hinging on one traveling space family, I wouldn't want this bunch being the one. I'd want them as happy and professional as the proverbial peas in a pod. Likewise, there's no way this family would have ever passed any sort of test to make the trip in the first place.
Then of course, there's Dr. Smith, whose accidental presence on board is the catalyst for all of them getting lost in the first place. Hamming it up as best as possible and given the film's best lines ("Trust me, evil knows evil" and "Sarcasm is the recourse of the weak mind") and with the occasional wink toward the original character played by Jonathan Harris ("We're doomed, we're all doomed," etc...), Gary Oldman is the only bright spot in an array of otherwise surprisingly dull performances. Both William Hurt (John Robinson) and Mimi Rogers (Maureen) are wasted and unbelievable in their roles, while Heather Graham, Lacey Chabert and Jack Johnson as Judy, Penny, and Will respectively all deliver decent, if not noteworthy takes on their characters.
Matt LeBlanc gives it his best shot playing Major Don West, and finally gets to show that the character really is/was a cad and continuously after Judy (unlike the more innocent proceedings on the TV show). Even so, LeBlanc is one of those actors who's unfortunately been typecast in his first big success and here he can't completely shake his TV role of Joey from "Friends." While one hopes otherwise, his presence may just be the jinx or kiss of death for this flick (all of the cast members from "Friends," except Courteney Cox, have crashed and burned in every one of their big screen efforts).
While the film starts off with a funny homage/cameo featuring June Lockhart (the original Maureen -- there are other cameos as well from former cast members), and includes moments and lines from the TV show ("Crush! Kill! Destroy!") it makes a horrendous mistake by bringing back Penny's pet "monkey." In the original it was Debbie, her pet "bloop" (presumably named after the sound it made), a chimpanzee wearing some sort of strange headdress to make it look "alien." Here we get a blawp, an odd monkey-like creature (created by computer effects and animatronic puppetry) that looks like a hyped up version of Abu (with much bigger eyes) the little monkey from the Disney cartoon "Aladdin."
Its presence does nothing for the story except destroy the fine line of credibility is was trying to establish. In addition, despite the film's other technical achievements, this little critter continually looks fake. While it's something of a step higher than using a real chimp, it's really just an obvious tie-in with some toy company that will undoubtably and inevitably sell stuffed toy versions of it. It's also surprising that it looks so bad considering how well they carry off the other effects and the fact that Silicon Graphics (the computers that most often are used to generate movie special effects) gets an in-movie plug as one of the Jupiter II's sponsors.
Despite the occasional eye popping special effects and a handful of interesting scenes (an opening dogfight, the attacking robot, and the attacking spider-like creatures sequence), Hopkins and Goldsman have concocted what turns out to be a rather boring movie. There's absolutely no excitement or suspense to the pre-lift off scenes and once in space, the movie is easy to watch, but certainly not engaging. The movie eventually gets around to some hokey time travel material (blatantly telegraphed quite early in a scene involving Will's science project that might as well have had a plaque reading, "To be used later in the movie") that might have been interesting had it been developed and then executed properly. As it stands, however, it comes off as nothing more than yet another uneventful sequence in the film.
Although I really wanted to like this film -- and it tries really hard to please fans of the series -- there are just so many "down" times that the picture eventually loses any of the momentum it had been building. The ending -- dealing with that weakly executed time travel plot -- even reverts back to the fake looking sets from the original series (albeit using a better material than papier- mache) as if the filmmakers had run out of money presenting all of the bang in the earlier scenes.
If you're a big fan of the TV series, don't go in with high expectations and you might just enjoy the film, but probably won't leave loving it. Filled with some spectacular effects and an easy to watch cast, the film isn't terrible by any means -- it's just not as good as it could, and should, have been. We give "Lost In Space" a 5 out of 10.
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