Lost in Space (1998)
I was starting to settle into a routine: medium popcorn, medium Coke , seat two thirds of the way back and brain left at the office. This was the summer of ‘98, and it was no place for intellectuals. As if to prove it, the MOST stupid of TV series had been exhumed. Some series from my childhood were convincing straight drama at the time, but subsequent repeats of most of them have left me embarrassed merely at the memory of ever taking them seriously.
However Lost in Space was never anything but crap, even to a five-year-old. The whole stupid family deserved to die slowly, though preferably not at the hands of Dr. Smith, who deserved to die more slowly. So here I was thirty years later, hoping to somehow cleanse my memories by paying five quid to be annoyed, and yet it passed a couple of hours amiably enough. It lacks the basic sense of showmanship of Godzilla, and it certainly isn’t as much fun as Armageddon, but I was expecting to enjoy this as much as a visit to the dentist. Especially when I remembered that the script was by Akiva Goldsman, the pen behind the Carry On Batman series.
Hopkins again (see Predator 2) pulls the trick of pitching you right in to the middle of the action with very little exposition, and it’s a wise move not to make a big deal of Matt Le Blanc’s stab at movie stardom – though like the movie, Le Blanc is more likeable than could have been expected. The movie has a clean and shiny surface, immediately impressive but probably doomed to age quickly once digital effects become more sophisticated. In particular the cute alien doesn’t blend in to the background in any meaningful way. The plot bowls along cheerfully, and quite a bit of time is spent travelling, rather than being interminably stuck on a cheap backlot.
All the cast seem to have been trying hard to avoid accusations of making easy money, so William Hurt and Gary Oldman needn’t be too ashamed of turning up. Heather Graham has the best supply of lipstick and hairspray in outer space since Erin Gray hung up her boots, and manages the trick of making Mimi Rogers seem haggard as well as irritating. Towards the end of the movie, an interesting and sinister plot development almost takes place, when young Will Robinson meets his older self along with a partially arachnid Dr. Smith, but then the movie drops the ball by making a nonsensical time-travel step. This isn’t too surprising, as this movie is more carefully aimed at a family audience than any of the other recent blockbusters, so it’s probably wrong to expect anything but a clean and shiny heart beating beneath the movie’s surface.
Rating: 
[imdb]0120738[/imdb]
