LOST IN SPACE
WenQing
Directed by : Stephen Hopkins
Produced by : New Line Cinemas
Main Cast : William Hurt, Mimi Rogers, Gary Oldman, Matt Le Blanc, Heather Graham, Lacey Chalbert.
Length : 120 minutes
Rating : * * out of * * * * *
BOGUS IN SPACE
LOST IN SPACE is a killer of a title, it says everything about the movie, and it says nothing at all... and that's precisely what this film is all about, nothing at all. It's about nothing because every single image, action sequence, dialogue pattern and twist of plot has been explored extensively since silent films gave way to the "talkies"... nothing new, nothing exciting... and, it's boring too!
![[ LOST IN SPACE Photo ]](/film/images/lostinspace3.jpg)
Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, when I caught the trailers for LOST IN SPACE, I saw big computer-animated spiders chasing a lasergun-toting Matt Le Blanc, who was blowing them to bits and making their intestinal juices squirt everywhere... and it's no surprise that it reminded me immediately of STARSHIP TROOPERS, the most recent mind-numbing bogus journey into senseless film-making! Once the LOST IN SPACE trailer concluded, someone fashionably sensitive behind me said, rather audibly : "What a bogus movie!". And that's what LOST IN SPACE is, entirely bogus.
Here's why... the plot gets as contorted as this: it's 2058, the earth's resources are fast depleting, the Robinson family (for the same "Swiss Family Robinson" effect as in the original television series) is to journey to the only inhabitable planet in the known universe, Alpha Prime (you, know I wouldn't want to live on a planet called Alpha Prime... I mean, would that make me an Alphan? a Primean? would that make those native born inhabitants primates?). They will go into suspended animation for the whole ten year journey, help colonise Alpha Prime, and set up a hyper-gate there to match the hyper-gate back at earth so earthlings, who spoilt their own planet, can go to another one to spoil it too (now do we really deserve to be saved?).
Unfortunately, vile Gary Oldman ends up in the spacecraft Jupiter 2 along with the Robinson family, rips them out of hypersleep, and an accident forces the family to use the hyperdrive which sends them to an uncharted part of the galaxy. At this point, the precocious daughter Penny Robinson comments: "we're lost aren't we?" And so we get the adventure; silly double-crossing schemes by Oldman, silly spiders running after the family (there was no sign of a "Brainbug" like in STARSHIP TROOPERS, so the spiders ambled along aimlessly getting blown to bits... actually it was the same in TROOPERS too), crashlanding on a boring planet, getting off it (which takes up another half of the movie) and then concluding the film with the most awful, terrible ending you could possible imagine... the Robinson family engage the hyperdrive again and hope they get to Alpha Prime, the little boy says : "Cool" and the movie ends, pretending it deserves a sequel. How perfectly awful.
Now here are the very sad copycat situations that LOST IN SPACE uses : an ineffectual pointless alien monkey that changes colour and has eyelids that blink horizontally- horizontal blinking from MEN IN BLACK, monkey from OUTBREAK (including the little daughter Penny repeating the same line "there you are!" from the Dustin Hoffman vehicle, and Penny also quoting the universal line for would-be pet-owners : "can I keep her?"), the spiders (you know where they came from), space-travel and spacecraft technology (INDEPENDENCE DAY, even "Babylon 5"), a spaceship crash scene (straight from STAR TREK : GENERATIONS or was it THE FINAL FRONTIER... oh these TREK films all look alike too anyway), a hostile planet with huge mushroom-like plants that puff up suspicious looking dust (which reminds me of the field of poppies in THE WIZARD OF OZ, except the puffy dust in LOST IN SPACE doesn't even figure in the plot, even though Gary Oldman says : "we're home in Kansas now Toto" for good measure), a rampaging robot that repeats : "destroy destroy destroy" (which sounds like the ugly metal canisters of cheesy "Dr Who" episodes repeating : "exterminate, exterminate, exterminate"), and an abortive time-travelling twist of plot, with a big time-bubble on a planet (reminders of another anaemic adventure with Sharon Stone, "SPHERE", a bubble in a spacecraft on the seabed for 300 years but actually a spacecraft from the future... confusing? No, the word is bogus).
LOST IN SPACE runs like a overly-long pilot episode of a special effects- laden sitcom. There is no menace in the spiders, and the evil Dr Smith (Gary Oldman) is never really that evil, and I don't even care if the family is lost in space because it feels like next week there'll be another episode for sure. The dialogues run like a mish-mash of punchlines from "Friends", "Third Rock from the Sun" and other low-brow comedies. The conflicts within the family itself are paralysingly... domestic, and so the film never gets off the ground to become exciting, or engaging. This is not to say that the characters themselves aren't already very very very dull and predictable (and William Hurt and Gary Oldman sometimes look similar because of their beards!). I'm sad that a talented actress like Mimi Rogers is made to say banal and brainless lines like : "when you two (Hurt and Oldman facing off with some machismo) are done hosing down the deck with testosterone...". I'm sad Heather Graham who gave an exceptionally appealing performance in BOOGIE NIGHTS (oops, a movie no one in my country actually gets to watch) is a boring, smiley-faced medical doctor who launches flares shaped like Bugs Bunny into the air to guide Matt Le Blanc back to the ship. I'm sad, but I think William Hurt is lost in space simply because he's an accidental tourist (I couldn't resist that, apologies). And I'm tired of Gary Oldman trying to hijack somebody else's airplane and being the evil guy (THE FIFTH ELEMENT, DRACULA, AIR FORCE ONE, THE PROFESSIONAL).
LOST IN SPACE dwindles into your domestic drama with dad who needs to spend more time with son, a bit of time travel lessons from history so dad gets to see son in the future, twisted by dad's absence (the ghost of Christmas future? Scrooged again?). It has daughter getting used to leaving her whole life behind on earth and deciding to accept her fate of travelling aimlessly in space with her family (dad quarrels with Matt Le Blanc about who gets to fly the ship, who knows which direction to fly... sort of like mom and dad disagreeing over map directions and driving... sort of like being lost on holiday... sort of like every single installment of "NATIONAL LAMPOON'S FAMILY VACATIONS" with funnier Chevy Chase). It has dashing Matt Le Blanc getting hot with daughter Judy Robinson (like Skippy the boy next door in "Family Ties" tripping over to Michael J. Fox's house to woo his sister Mallory). And it has bad guy Gary Oldman who is sort of like the clownish bad guy who we laugh at when he slips and falls, gets run over by a car, falls down flights of stairs, and magically reappears next week good as new, and as scheming as ever!
![[ LOST IN SPACE Photo ]](/film/images/lostinspace4.jpg)
The sad thing about LOST IN SPACE is that it isn't sure whether to take itself seriously. The shining and transcendant moment in the film is when the Robinson family goes to sleep and one by one they wish each other goodnight. The camera zooms out from the ship as the voices say their "goodnight" rounds, and we immediately are reminded of television's "The Waltons" (don't remember it? it was almost too long ago for me to remember too... but every episode ends with the camera zooming out from the Walton house, and the voices of every family member wishing each other goodnight as the lights in the house go out one by one). Then Matt Le Blanc expresses his utter disbelief at this feel-good "Waltons-esque" sequence, and I'm almost sure the scriptwriter is smarter than his script but doesn't show it... instead, the rest of LOST IN SPACE spirals into copying cliches without reworking them for good effect. If the script had decided to take that campy turn, it might have actually made the film more entertaining, since it had nothing new to give us... Most of all I hoped at one point William Hurt might say something romantic to Mimi Rogers and finish his line with "and here's to you, Mrs Robinson", with some Simon and Garfunkel jazzed up in the background for effect... and with that I would have associated one of the two Robinson girls being named Elaine, so that one of the male characters might have to save her by screaming : "Elaine, Elaine, Elaine!" at her from behind a glass window, and banging on it repeatedly to get her attention (both from THE GRADUATE).
What we ended up with were cliches : I expected Gary Oldman to turn into a monster because of the spider bite, and he ends up looking like Natasha Henstridge in SPECIES (after she ate up Gabriel Byrne and became the ugly thing). I expected even that if they spilt water on Blarp the alien monkey, she'd multiply, and that if they fed her after midnight, she'd become a gremlin (so the Robinsons would have to kill the evil Blarp-gremlin with "bright light bright light")... luckily that didn't happen. I expected the spaceship that the Robinsons discovered to be from their own future (because they continually say : "this technology is way beyond what I remember leaving") and it was, injecting the time bubble into the plot's bloodstream, which killed it.
After all, if the Robinsons at the close of the movie found out how to get to Alpha Prime from the spaceship of their own future, how could the last recording on the spaceship say : "we haven't found the Robinsons, but we'll never stop trying to find them"... doesn't that mean the Robinsons were forever lost since their finding the directions to Alpha Prime didn't get them there, so that the spaceship of their future continued to hold that same recording? And doesn't it mean that if the Robinsons got off the boring planet, then their witnessing of the future inside the time-bubble on the planet (a future where they never got off the planet) shouldn't have occurred since they never got stranded on the planet to have a future there anyway? And doesn't it mean that if William Hurt had to use the time-machine in the future to get back to his family 5 minutes earlier to save them, then his son Will would not have been left on the planet to build the time-machine in the first place, and so William Hurt could never have gotten back to save his family anyway? I can only guess that LOST IN SPACE isn't bothered with these inconsistencies of time-travel resolutions, and I suppose that the phrase young Will Robinson spouts early in the film : "don't even think about it!" echoes the same sentiments I garnered from watching STARSHIP TROOPERS... don't even think!
So finally LOST IN SPACE gets you nowhere, literally, and really gets boring in many parts of the film... and it reminded me today of the "Muppet Show's" "Pigs In Space", where Miss Piggy and two other pigs engage comic topics while they spin around in space going nowhere in particular. At least it's bogus and funny... LOST IN SPACE is only bogus, so don't take this trip with the Robinsons unless you have nothing else to do.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Tonight With Gurmit.
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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