Lost in Space (1998) Movie | Gary Oldman | William Hurt | Matt LeBlanc | Review & Facts

[Music] e e e hello guys welcome to my channel in this video we are going to review Lost in Space movie so join us as we dive into the world of movie review exploring the depths of Lost in Space movie get ready to embark on an epic Journey filled with interesting facts as we explore movie review and facto whether you're a season with movie review or just curious about lost and Space movie review so then hit that subscribe button and join our community don't forget to turn on notifications so you never miss out on our latest Adventures now let's dive in Lost in Space is a 1998 American Science Fiction Adventure film directed by Steven Hopkins and starring William Hurt Matt Leblon Gary Oldman and Heather Graham the plot is adapted from the 1965 1968 CBS television series of the same name itself inspired by the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johan David whis several actors from the TV show make Cameo appearances the film focuses on the Robinson family who undertake a voyage to a nearby star system to begin large-scale immigration from ass soon to be uninhabitable Earth but are thrown off course by a sabur and must try to find their way home Lost in Space received negative reviews from critics and gross $1 136.28 million budget filming began on March 3rd 1997 in London sheeper and Studios with more than 700 special effect shots planned two done by Jim Henson's Creature Shop among other visual effects vendors the $70 million Lost in Space film was new Li's hoped to launch a multimedia franchise followed by animated and live action television series three licensing deals were made with Trend Masters for toys and Harper prism and Scholastic for thae and novels on its opening weekend Lost in Space grossed $2,154 919 and debuted at number one at Theos box office ending Titanic's 15we long hold on the first place position 7 it opened in a record 3D 36 Theaters 8 and grossed an average of $696 per screening Lost in Space gross 69 m117 629 in the United States and Canada and 67 m417 N4 internationally bringing its worldwide total to 136 m159 m423 Lost in Space received negative reviews from critics upon release 111 Roger eert gave the film a rating of 1 and 1/2 out of four calling it a dimwitted shoot them up 12 Wade major of box office rated the film at 1 and A2 out of five calling it the dumbest and least imaginative adaptation of a television series yet translated to the screen 13 James barard nelli was slightly more favorable giving the film a rating of 2 and A2 out of four while praising the film set design he criticized its Meandering storyline and lifeless protagonists saying that lost in space features a few action sequences that generate adrenaline jolts but this is not an edge of the seat Motion Picture 14 online aggregators have tracked both contemporary and recent reviews of Lost in Space at Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 27% based on 84 appraisals with an average score of four 910 the site's consensus reads clumsily directed and missing most of the TV series campy charm Lost in Space sadly lives down to its title 15 the film holds a score of 42 out out of 100 on Metacritic based on the opinions of 19 journalists indicating mixed or average reviews 16 audiences pulled by cinemascore gave the film an average grade of B on an A plus to f scale Lost in Space is a dim witted Shoot Em Up based on the old eye hesitate to say classic TV series it's got cheesy special effects a muddy visual look and characters who say obvious things in obvious ways if it outgross is the brilliant dark city the previous sci-fi film from the same Studio then audiences must have lost their will to be entertained the TV series was Loosely modeled on the novel The Swiss Family Robinson got a family Shipwrecked far from home and using wit and Ingenuity to live off the land I love that book and especially it's detailed description of how the family made tools machines and a home for themselves and train the local Animals the movie doesn't bother with such details after a space battle that is the predictable curtain razor and a quick explanation of why and how the Robinson family is setting off for a planet called Alpha Prime the film takes place mostly on board their saucer shaped ship and involves many more space battles showdowns struggles attacks hyperspace Journeys and exploding planets in between the character plow through creaky dialogue and exhausted relationship problems imagine the film that could be made about a family marooned on a distant planet using what they could Salvage from their ship or forage from the environment that screenplay would take originality intelligence and but lost in space is one of those typing speed jobs where the screenwriter is like a stenographer rewriting what he's seen at the movies the story Earth will not survive another two decades Alpha Prime is the only other habitable planet mankind has discovered Prof John Robinson William hert and his family have been chosen to go there and construct a hypergate to match the gate at the earth end their Journey will involve years of suspended animation but once the other gate is functioning humans can zip instantaneously to Alpha Prime there needs to be a hypergate at of course because otherwise there's no telling where a hyperdrive will land you as the Robinson's soon find out also on board are the professor's wife Mor Mimi Rogers Their scientist daughter Judy Robinson Heather Graham their younger daughter Penny Lacy chabbert and their son will Jack Johnson who is the brains of the outfit the ship is piloted by Ace space cadet Don West Matt Leblon and includes an intelligent Rob robot who will help with the tasks at the other hand oh and lurking below deck is the evil doctor Zachary Smith gar Oldman who wants to sabotage the mission but is trapped on board when the ship lifts off so he awakens the Robinson after which the ship is thrown off horon seems doomed to fall into the Sun Don West has a brainstorm they'll use the hyperdrive to zap right through the sun this strategy of course lands them in a galaxy far far away with a sky filled with unfamiliar stars and then the movie ticks off a series of crises of which I can enumerate a rebellious robot an exploding Planet mechanical space spiders a distracting romance and family issues of trust and Authority the movie might at least have been more fun to look at if it had been filmed in brighter colors director Steven Hopkins and his cinematographer Peter for some reason choose a murky muted pallet everything looks like a drab brown suit or a cheap rotor gravier you want to use some Windex on the screen and Bruce Bron's musical score saws away tirelessly with counter fate excitement when nothing of interest is happening on the screen it just makes it worse when the music pretends it cares of the performances what can be said except that William Hurt Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers deserve Reserve medals for remaining standing the kids are standard issue juveniles with straight teeth and good posture and there is a monkey-like little alien pet who looks as if he comes from a world where all living beings are clones of Felix the Cat this is the kind of movie that if it fell into a black hole you wouldn't be able to tell the difference Lost in Space is new Ling Cinemas bid to enter the space franchise race undoubtedly impressed by the long term consistent profitability of Paramount Star Trek movies the ninth of which will be released this year new line has decided to resurrect another late 60s science fiction television Enterprise Lost in Space admittedly 30 years ago there weren't many similarities between the two programs Star Trek was a relatively serious socially conscious series while Lost in Space became infected with what I'll call the Batman sickness and over the course of its 4-year run devolved from a semi-straight program into pure Camp much of that silliness has been removed for this big budget big screen effort fans of the original Lost in Space will likely not be displeased by the direction this movie takes in addition to retaining the basic premise of the series all of the characters are back as well write down to the nameless robot whose voice is provided by the same man who did the job in the TV program dick teld there are also cameos by four of the 60s cast June lockart who played Moren Robinson mark gdd Don West Angela cite Penny Robinson and Marta Christen Judy Robinson despite all of these nods to the Past however the special effects are strictly state-of-the-art unfortunately there's not much to supplement all the ey popping visuals the story is unfocused and the character development is virtually non-existent one of the problems is that lost in space uses more than 30 minutes setting up the plot and it's not a particularly interesting half hour if a strong box office resp spon Warren's future installments at least we will have gotten over this tedious hurdle the remainder of the film is divided into two parts the investigation of a seemingly deserted spaceship and the exploration of an inhospitable Planet all the while the space traveling Family Robinson are trying to find their way home while dealing with a dangerous doorway it's 2058 and Earth is a Dying World the Robinson John William Hurt Moren nimi Rogers Judy Heather Graham Penny Lacy Bert and will Jack Johnson along with their pilot Don West Matt Leong have boarded the spaceship Jupiter 2 on a colonization mission to the planet Alpha Prime thanks to a stoway sabot named Dr Smith Gary Oldman things don't go as planned 16 hours out of Earth orbit disaster strikes the Jupiter 2o and to keep the ship from plunging into the sun west is forced to activate the hyperdrive which saves the ship but throws it light gears across the Galaxy into Uncharted space seven people and one robot are lost looking for the way back to Earth the set design in Lost in Space is impressive the interior of the spaceship is suitably futuristic looking while the earth-based scenes with their visually stunning backdrops recall last year's The Fifth Element most of the model sequences are equally Flawless but the computer generated spider like aliens have the same flaw exhibited by similar creatures and Starship Troopers They look fake on the whole however Lost in Space has a polished High budget appearance too bad some of the effects money wasn't spent on the script Lost in Space is infected with a Meandering storyline and lifeless protagonists without a clear narrative drive there doesn't seem to be much of a point to the whole Endeavor the desire to get home doesn't generate the level of urgency one might reasonably expect and the movie ends up feeling like a few episodes of Star Trek Voyager strung together there isn't a clear villain either since Dr Smith is more of an anti-hero than anything else's motivation is self-interest not malice in the TV series Smith as portrayed by Jonathan Harris was the standout and Oldman does a superb job Reinventing the character bringing back many of Harris mannerisms while leading his own indelible Mark Smith becomes a fascinating blend of Charisma and delicious nastiness Beyond Oldman however the cast is disappointingly Bland as John and Morin Robinson William Hurt and Mimi Rogers fizzle Heather Graham who is wonderful as roller girl in Boogie Nights fails to do anything interesting with Judy friends Matt leblan displays no range whatsoever only the two children helium voed Lacy chabbert and cool as a cucumber Jack Johnson show signs of having a pulse chabbert especially shows spunk but she has the least screen time of the major players incidentally it could be argued that it wouldn't have mattered if everyone in the cast had been in Peak acting form since the script delivers the kind of two-dimensional characters involved in Shallow relationships that even top-notch performances couldn't do much with Lost in Space features a few action sequences that generate adrenaline jolts but this is not an edge of the seat motion picture and to satisfy the kitty crowd there's the likable robot and a friendly read cute alien called blop which is the product of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and seems designed to appeal to younger audience members this may add to the film's attract ction in some quarters but not as far as I'm concerned I wanted a little more energy and a story that went somewhere as a result while I can offer a mild endorsement of Lost in Space as a comic book come to life it's too weak a film for me to stamp with an unqualified recommendation as a lover of side fiction I'm truly surprised this film didn't continue on with more sequels being based on the 1960s hit TV series Lost in Space by Irwin Allen where everything was very colorful and dialogue was quite intelligent and witty to a more dark industrial look where the dialogue is filled with trivial onliners the movie had a lot to live up to but of course it always comes down to money and harsh critics had the gross income been higher there was plans for all assigned actors to be a part of a film Trilogy how Grand that would have been despite what the critics thought I thought it was funny and edgy but had the potential to be fantastic had the dialogue been scripted better think about it what's not to love about an intelligent family taking off in space with an enemy aboard ship and getting lost the stories would have been endless apparently in the TV show back in the day there was a lot of banter between the two Brilliant Minds of opposing forces young little Robinson and Dr Zachary Smith but there was not enough of this shown in the film unfortunately it would have delighted audiences with laughter appealing to every age directed by Steven Hopkins written by Akiva goldsman and produced by Mark W Steven Hopkins Akiva goldsman and Carla fry there were some cool actors in This film that I felt needed more recognition for one Gary Olman as the villain Dr Zachary Smith who always brings characters to life secondly Lacy chaber as The Sassy theatrical teenager Penny Robinson and last but not least Matt leblan as the Studley major Don West to be honest I never realized just how in shape Matt LeBlanc was at this point of his career until I'd seen this film on the hit TV show Friends where he played Joey tribon a man with much charm but not much brains you can see the resemblance between his two characters except major West is majorly rough around the edges and looks badass let me paint a picture for you the time is now 2058 and technology has advanced so far that humans are capable of traveling to distant Stars though no one has dared to travel to the Extremes in search of new live evil planet that in until now professor John Robinson starring William Hurt along with his wife Professor Morin Robinson starring nimi Rogers decide to take their family along for a space cruise through the unknown but their mission is sabotaged by their physician Dr Smith Oldman who just so happens to be a spy as luck would have it Dr Smith became stranded on their ship leaving the crew with problematic situations at times while other times he was exactly the help they needed but they recruited Ed the best pilot they could have asked for major West leelong and a humorous mechanical robot who loves to say danger Will Robinson so while the whole premise of the movie is about finding hope amongst the stars in order to save Humanity since Earth is losing resources fast it ends up being about how will Robinson wants his father to realize how precious love is or how precious he is something to that extent whatever the case the movie is filled with both action and adventure through space and a joy to watch I enjoyed it though like I said before it lacked the potential to be something Grand my favorite parts were the penny Vision segments where Penny Robinson would poetically journalize her life into her watch I could clearly see the future Mean Girls gret and weeners before her time but in emo mode compared to John Robinson's hyper engine responsible for the ship's ability to jump through space or will Robinson's uncanny ability to form a friendship with a robot and recreate him or even the time machine that will Robinson kept going on about which surprisingly proved to be true eventually I still find her watch to be the coolest invention of all all I could think about was how much I wanted one during the film my other favorite parts were when the camera angles were shown through the inside of the ship from the perspective of the crew aboard and you felt like you were taken along for the ride I would love to see a 3D ride be made of Lost in Space how dope would that be almost would have the feel of the Back to the Future ride in Universal Studios but all space and all mystery I found a line that stuck with me as a child since I first saw this film said by Dr Smith evil knows evil even at a young age I understood that quote and I understand it even more now as an adult another great line said by Dr Smith is when major West forces him to tag along he says I'm a doctor not a space Explorer homage to Dr McCoy in Star Trek 1966 when he said says I'm a doctor not a brick layer Heather Graham also stars in this film as Dr Judy Robinson who major West has the hots for and is the engineer of the ship but apparently the director had his eye of her as well since the two were dating during filming it's cool to know that most of the original cast members from the original TV show were cast as cameos in this film but I think the most surprisingly cool fact about this film is that the 1960s Lost in Space show was said in 1997 which is when the film's production began coincidence I think not overall I think this movie was a hoot to watch and I found the idea of it to be Exquisite I give this movie six 51 Stars when the movie ends you begin to question what happened to them where did they end up when what will become of Dr Smith and what's with the alien monkey bark all questions that never get answered unfortunately but a new Netflix show is in the works and I'm looking forward to seeing it so keep your eyes out for it the film which is currently available to stream on Netflix Wast no time getting started after the old new line Cinema logo flies by we're treated to a voiceover from a sleepy voiced William Hurt detailing one of those pollution destroyed the Earth so now we have to find a new home sci-fi scenarios there are rival factions fighting over who gets to be the first to colonize the new planet honestly there's even more to it than just that but before you have time to process everything you're watching Matt LeBlanc played Major Don West and Morgan from The Walking Dead trade gay Panic jokes as they pilot spaceships and track down bad guys it's an admirably busy opening with director Steven Hopkins clearly wanting to drop audiences straight into the action like an especially caffeinated Star Wars but it's also rather pointless the bad guys liblong shoots down the plot forgets all about them just a couple of minutes later the flashy orange I Tech uses to help with targeting this is its one and only appearance in the film still it was enough to fool me into thinking this Lost in Space movie might not be so bad after all at least the special effects don't look quite so terrible and leblanc's false bravado is instantly fun to mock he could have benefited from some more lessons in the tribon school of acting might we actually have a semi-competent late 90s Space movie on our hands danger Kelly's misplaced optimism we then meet the Robinson family led by genius workaholic John hurt his technological breakthroughs will allow humans to successfully leave the planet and he's volunteered his own family wife Morin Mimi Rogers daughters Judy a post Boogie night/ pre Austin Powers Heather Graham and Penny party of Fes Lacy chabbert who talks into a video recorder on her wrist like an early version of vlogging and sonka genius will Jack Johnson know not that Jack Johnson to be the guinea pigs Lee blanks West is the the highly annoyed hotop pilot assigned the babysitting task of escorting the Robinson's on their 10-year Journey almost all of which will take place in hypersleep of course their mission goes Haywire almost immediately soon enough there's a scheming Gary Oldman over the top as always rampaging robot vo by dick tufeld just as he did for the 60s TV series an unbelievably fake looking CGI spiders to contend with and a series of time travel dependent twists that create plot holes the size of Jupiter you do get to see a youngish Jared Harris won't spoil who he plays clearly having all of his dialogue dubbed by someone else a bizarre site which either adds to Lost in spaces so bad it's good enjoyment factor or simply piles on the misery I can't decide which one not surprisingly William Hurt looks like he'd rather be anywhere else and his familiar Arc of being a workaholic father who needs to pay more attention to his kids never fully connects Matt leblank meant to be playing the can't believe I got stuck on this stupid Mission with these yals but it comes off as almost sociopathic and impossibly creepy he hits on Judy pretty much non-stop often an earshot distance from her dad the Robinson family never really feels like an actual family the women in the story spend nearly the entire second half putting on their best worried face while looking out a view screen the special effects quickly take a turn into astonishingly bad territory the time travel plot doesn't make much sense I blame Mission Impossible or The Fugitive or The Brady Bunch Movie or maybe just all of them Hollywood after all has never met a good idea it couldn't run into the ground and when the first half of the 9s gave us a couple of successful film adaptations of old TV shows the tail end of the decade gave us crap like Lost in Space the Avengers in Wild Wild West as a kid of the '90s though I'd somehow gone all this time without ever seeing Lost in Space it came out out in 1998 at which point I was already in the bag for anything friends or party of five related plus I recall having a crush on Mimi Rogers lost in the space ticked all three of those boxes yet the word of mouth was so so toxic I stayed away even when Best Buy later gave me a free DVD copy of the film along with wild wild west The Perfect Storm and two others with my first DVD player I still never gave it a look that's one DVD that went straight to the garage sale pile and until Netflix came along with its reboot I forgot all about Lost in Space both the 60 show and 98 film I grown to believe Matt Leong's filmography couldn't sink any lower than that chimpanzee baseball movie I was wrong as ci.com recently declared in its own Lost in Space retrospective it's rare to see a movie that fails on just about every level hudos for pulling that off I guess Lost in Space is a movie which always feels feels like it's in a rush even though it's over 2 hours long as if barreling to the next action set piece will distract from the poor performances tonally challenged script and atrocious visuals ultimately they tried to make a gritty action film out of a campy old Sci-Fi show yet now it is the Netflix series which is trying to be the gritty reboot to the campy old movie so let this serve as a Remer for whenever we might want to complain about the current state of the Hollywood Blockbuster as Lost in Space shows it's not like these things were so much better 20 years ago Lost in Space 1965 1968 is irrevocably a product of its time the mid 1960s as a series it combined fairy tale Whimsy and innocence with a schizophrenic approach to science and the future on one hand the Robinson Pioneers possessed all of this wonderful Space Age Matt Mason likee technology to make their lives easier and on the other hand the same technology had stranded them in some Far corner of the universe Lost in Space on TV also featured this great mid 1960s Space Age paraphernalia foxy oversized and predominantly silver with lots of blinking Bright Lights there was a cond do attitude a hold over from Camelot perhaps at work in the series too despite the premise of being lost and love or hate the Dr Smith role and the use to which the character was put during three tumultuous Seasons Jonathan Harris exhibited incredible commitment to that role in the 19 1998 Lost in Space movie absolutely no expense was spared in terms of special effects in terms of sets and in terms of lead actors but somehow the movie doesn't connect on the same simple human level that the series did on a weekly basis the filmmakers Apparently believe we want to see in this franchise weaving spaceships and lots and lots of fireballs they think that's the why of Lost in Space though the Irwin Allen series could afford no such bells and whistles or perhaps the movie doesn't work because in a bow to reality and the drastic changes in American culture the new Lost in Space family is portrayed as wholly disfunctional and somewhat unpleasant this is an attempt to make the family oriented property fit in better during a new era to reflect our 1990s era domestic reality but it's nonetheless a change that isn't entirely welcome it's very much the same problem that plagued the new Battlestar Galactica reimagination there's a vast difference between a family facing challenge es and crises from the outside a kind of Little House on the Prairie template where life throws ample challenges at you and facing internal personal character flaws such as alcoholism or narcissism in a dramatic crisis situation and sci-fi setting like the extermination of the human race or being Lost in Space viewers want to see I believe characters clinging together and fighting the elements as it were not battling personal subplots about alcoholism that were trite when As the World Turns vetted them 30 years ago I think people want to see the best of mankind fighting the syons or space spiders not the worst of us or finally maybe this 1988 movie fails simply because some of the casting doesn't seem based on who is best for the role but who boasts the most Marquee value Matt LeBlanc in particular doesn't exude the intelligence necessary to portray a believable space pilot his gum chewing horn toad comes off as hopelessly and irrevocably dumb his dialogue consisting of lines like yea showtime and last one to get a bad guy buys the beer is banal on a level that the old TV series could not even have conceived critics generally weren't impressed with Lost in Space writing in the New York Times Janet Maslin wrote this lost in space is much more chaotic and less innocent than its source Roger Ebert accurately term the film dimwitted and the San Francisco Chronicle called it a warm wallow in the cinema of the dumb down all these critics were chipping away at the edges of one particularly relevant argument that childlike innocence has been supplanted by a kind of witless breathlessness the original loss in space wasn't Shakespeare to be certain but nor was it patently overtly cheerfully dumb some episodes even today play as lyrical Fairy Tales stories of family values reasserted in a Land of extra terrestrial magic and occasional Terror you can't look back honestly at some of those old black and white white stories like my friend Mr Nobody one of our dogs is missing or the magic mirror without feeling a sense of wondrous childlike imagination if not strict Devotion to establish science it might have more in common with the Wizard of Oz than Star Trek but Lost in Space the TV series had something especially in those early black and white Days by contrast the Lost in Space movie seeks to hammer the audience with a pile up of catastrophic incidents many admittedly interesting at least initially and at the same time pay lip service to the family values Vibe of the original in a bit of twoo clever criticism the movies Dr Smith asks at one point will every little problem be an excuse for family sentiment that is precisely the movie's modus operandi to its ultimate detriment in 2058 Earth is on the edge of Oblivion the environment is dying and the only hope for survival is to colonize a far away world Alpha Prime to do so however two hyper Gates must be built one in Earth orbit and one in orbit of alpha Prime when both are up and running Colony ships can jump instantly from one point to the other and the relocation of man can begin professor John Robinson William Hurt leads a mission to Alpha Prime to construct the second hypergate because of the long duration of the mission a decade his family comes along aboard the Jupiter 2 among the crew are his wife Moren Robinson Mimi Rogers physician Judy Robinson Heather Graham petulant teenager Penny Lacy chabbert and boy Genius will Jack Johnson but Professor Robinson's problems begin when a new less than Cooperative Hot Shot pilot major West Matt LeBlanc assumes the role of pilot on Jupiter 2 and a sabur from the global sedition Dr Smith Gary Oldman programs the ship's robot dick twell to destroy the Robinson's once the craft is in Flight averting a disaster in Space the Jupiter 2 jumps through the Sun and becomes hopelessly lost in space and time the Robinson's run a foul of strange alien spiders on a derc spaceship and later crash land on an inhospitable planet where they encounter their future tragically altered selves there in that Peak into a dark future Jon gets the chance to see how his absence as a father has affected a grown-up well space combines a number of plots from the old TV series including elements of The Reluctant dway the derelict and any episode in which Dr Smith makes trouble for the Robinsons by interfacing with alien biologi technology or Personnel Wish Upon a Star Ghost In Space the space Trader his majesty Smith All That Glitters the dream monster and so on the film directed by Steven Hopkins also attempts Fidelity in terms of production design the Jupiter one in the film looks much like the TV series Jupiter 2 for instance and before the end of the movie the newer high-tech robot has been been rebuilt by Will to resemble the popular B9 that famous bubble-headed booby and cousin to Robbie the robot even the Interiors look like faithful if updated reconstructions of the 1960s sets only with more curves and a more organic feel of all the cast LeBlanc fares the worst he is utterly unlikable as West and given the worst dialogue to vet William Hurt seems bored and disconnected as Professor Robinson Mimi Rogers and Heather Graham are okay and only Gary Oldman absolutely shines in fact oldman's version of the treacherous Dr Smith character feels like a real tribute to Jonathan Harris coming off as arrogantly self-important and straddling the line between good and evil Oldman Minds considerable humor and Menace from the screenplay and is the movie's Most Valuable Player he's great here the most contrived portions of lost and space involve Morin's unceasing complaints about Jon's time she constantly nags him about spending more hours with will even though she also has two daughters and he doesn't spend any time with them either so yes apparently only young boys not young girls require quality time with their father who knew the world would be so sexist still in 2058 I guess we know who wins the war on women more crucially moren's complaints come off as rather selfish and small given the context of what's happening around her John Robinson is struggling to save the planet Earth and the human race race and sure it would be nice if he could attend his son's science fair but I wager his priorities are just about right in fact I bet if Will were given a choice he'd decide that his dad should you know Save the Planet so that all kids can enjoy science fairs for years to come but John needs to spend more time with Will subplot is a manufactured crisis and a contrivance that isn't truly believable given the narrative details the movie sort of proves it's a non-issue when the older will even with spider Smith as a surate father does the right thing to save the universe and his family I guess John imparted some good qualities to his boy in the time he had he may be busy again saving the world but he isn't negligent or absent again the old series didn't contend with these IMO touches the Robinsons were essentially space pioneers and well the planet had to be tamed John Robinson Guy Williams was always there for his son if Will Bill mummy needed him but there wasn't this constant hand ringing on the TV series about how much time the two were spending together here the subplot is a little touchy Fey and unrealistic given the circumstances bottom line there's not a lot of time for father child closeness when your spaceship is plunging into the sun battling metal spiders Crash Landing or hovering at the edge of a dangerous SpaceTime bubble sorry kid suck it up even family must as we all know too well bow to reality and I I generally resent movies that suggest everything would be okay if a dad and son just spent a little more time together meanwhile the planet is falling apart another problem with the film is that in post-production apparently someone decided that the film needed to be funnier therefore we get an out of left Feel The Walton's joke and good night John Boy delivered an embarrassed voice over the problem isn't that the joke isn't funny though it isn't the problem is that it doesn't fit the scene we get a nice Fade Out on Jon and Morin about to have sex and then the very next instant we're on to a sound cue of the same two characters saying good night to each other and the kid like this is the galactic Brady Bunch like so much of the film's humor it's grown inducing as in congruous as that moment Remains the space creature that the Robinsons discover blop is even worse he has been crafted to look absolutely ridiculous the design of this alien might have fit in on the original series 40 years ago but it in no way fits the pallet of the 1998 film blob doesn't look like the product of a universe that includes the movie Robinsons And The truly scary alien metal spiders instead blop looks as though he was shipped in from the Funny Pages Circa 1959 every time the creature appears his presence takes you right out of the reality of the movie it's not just that the creature is composed of bad CGI it's that the visualization of the creature is all wrong for the earthy production canvas fanciful and Whimsical in a movie of skin tight bodysuits and dark Browns and Grays despite my reservations about the movie Lost in Space begins relatively well even though the opening space battle between the global sedition and United Global space force is entirely unnecessary the first hour of the film establishes well the threat to Earth the First Act boasts a decent pace and there's a respectable level of excitement and anticipation the battle on the alien derelict against the metal spiders is also thrilling from the point however in which Jon goes into the time bubble the movie gets lost itself lost and incoherent as the movie ends future will throws present John through a Time Vortex but it isn't entirely clear if West already has the power cells the Jupiter 2 needs for liftoff if Jon has them or if future will still has them why is the Jupiter 2 attempting escape velocity without the power source it needs why isn't anyone commenting on essentially a suicide run then the movie ends without resolving Dr Smith's crisis he's slowly turning into a giant spider monster but there are no attempts to treat the condition or even quarantine the guy the movie ends without even a hint of resolution on this front but this is after John will the robot and Smith himself have seen his future manifestation I very much doubt Smith would stay silent knowing he is carrying an infection that will transform him into a giant arachnid also lost in space never squares the circle in terms of the future the robot of the future comes back in time to the Jupiter 2 but in the real timeline will never finishes building that robot so if he does there will be two robots if he doesn't finish work on the robot then where did the robot come from having never actually been constructed by will not saying that this is an unworkable dilemma only that the movie might have made note of the time paradox joke about it would have been fine as a general premise Lost in Space boasts great potential even today the idea of a family alone on an alien world trying to make a go of things offers nearly infinite story ideas you don't have to make the movie schal C or wall-to-wall action to make the scenario work effectively you just need a few characters you like some tough conditions and a sense that as a family the Pioneers will stick together and see the mission through no matter the challenges but this lost in space wants to hit you on the head with in congruous platitudes about family a lot like the Dark Shadows remake I reviewed on Tuesday and then wow you was special effects explosions although I felt a legitimate thrill hearing dick teld voice the robot again in this film I remember well 1998 and my discontent regarding this film it remains a lost opportunity and an emotionally Hollow Adventure Hollywood seems hooked on needlessly remaking classic movies and now the trend seems to have shifted to television series reboots of Plenty try to reinvent them for new audiences whilst exploiting The Nostalgia of their original fan base now an update of Irwin Allen's Lost in Space is set to debut on Netflix 20 years after a failed attempt to reboot it as a cinematic franchise the original Lost in Space was a well-loved though somewhat wacky Golden Age science fiction series that ran for three seasons between 1965 to 68 it followed the exploits of the Robinson family who set off into space to escape an earth threatened by collision with a comet they were joined by a state-of-the-art robot and mad scientist who' been trying to sabotage their vessel but instead wound up becoming an accidental Stow the series was inspired by Swiss Family Robinson but more likely the hugely popular 1960 Disney film rather than the original 1812 novel by Johan David whis which was written as an education in Christian family values in Irwin Allan's update the family are marooned on a distant planet rather than an Uncharted Island 30 years after the series ended its run a big screen reboot was preceded by an extensive promotional campaign that included a tie-in with clothing company spewak who were to provide the futuristic flight jackets for the cast there were also teaser posters emblazoned with the catchphrase danger Will Robinson a line that was reportedly only used once during the entire Show's run perhaps some of that promotional budget would have been better spent on development ahead of production or maybe on the production itself which by all accounts was a rushed affair from script to screen the cliched script by AKA Goldman coming off the Batman and Robin debacle could well have benefited from a few redrafts in this version with director Steven Hopkins at the helm the Robinson family set off from Earth as Pioneers to Kickstart the colonization of a distant habitable planet Earth is doomed not by a comet but by humans as we used up all its resources and now pollution famine and War threatened to end civilization in decades apparently Recycling and green energy was just placating propaganda and nothing can avert our planet's impending doom the problem is exacerbated by an East West conflict and a terrorist organization known as the global sedition intent on defeating the white Devils of the West and reaching the new planet first this political East West divide contemporized the film and remains painfully relevant today for the most part the production hardly seems dated its vision of the future is well realized with the characters accepting and using fantastic new fangle gadgetry some of which has actually been developed over the decades since there's also nice attention to detail in every little display and readout and the overall look of the film props costume scense is very slick the production design is incredibly cool and it took an army of Carpenters plasters and sculptors to build the extensive Jupiter two Interiors at Sheron Studios the special effects were remarkable for 1998 using both green screen and digital Composites to combin sets motion control Miniatures and virtual models from the mid1 1990s small independent digital effects houses were springing up around the world and the production made the most of its budget by Outsourcing the effects to smaller companies Beyond Hollywood establishing this as a new decentralized production approach the film unpicks thre from several episodes of the TV series and reweaves them into a more compressed narrative the discovery of a gargantuan abandoned SPAC ship in this case the Proteus inexplicably maroon from the future and harboring a nasty alien surprise is a storyline taken from the the derel the second episode of the series The flyby sequence is very reminiscent of Event Horizon 1997 where the lwis and Clark approaches a similar dormant Hulk and here the film takes a darker turn for a few minutes its drawing on Haunted House tropes it also brought to mind Disney's the black hole 1979 and there are passing similarities between the robot designs in both films pretty soon the mood lifts again with the discovery of an alien creature that looks to have stepped from the cover of Amazing Stories or similar Golden Age science fiction magazines Penny Lacy chabbert is taken by its cuteness and volunteers to be its carer and trainer usually the cute thing put in solely to amuse younger viewers ends up being both embarrassing and annoying but block as she names it doesn't intrude too much for its time the integration of this cartoonish computer generated character courtesy of the Jim Henson Creature Shop with live actors was an adventurous experiment blop helps to lighten the tone as the film becomes quite intense at times including the escape from the Proteus pursued by ravenous Unstoppable metallic space spiders from which not everyone emerges unscathed this is a rather com some action sequence that's little more than a straightforward shoot them up seemingly with one eye on the computer game tie in Market the kid and me was excited by the holographic interface that enables young will to operate the robot by remote control a very clever device to allow a child to take part in the action whilst effectively keeping Will Robinson out of danger the robot is destroyed in the battle with alien spiders and will later rebuild it to more closely resemble the 1960s version another clever ND to the original is the design of the Robinson spaceship the Jupiter 2 at its launch it is recognizable as being the vessel from the TV series but this turns out to be only a protective shell which is promptly shed once in space for the new sleer curvier vessel to emerge and bring us into a more 1990s vision of the future the film comes across as episodic and certainly falls into the threea format the first two roughly following the setup of the original series first two episodes in the Escape the Jupiter 2 is damaged and crash lands on a nearby Planet as in the original series the first survival challenge the planet throws at them is extreme cold they soon detect a power source that seems to be compatible with their own depleted reserves but it appears to be within a weird time bubble the original series included several episodes featuring time warps and played with different versions of the characters from alternative time streams without spoiling things too much the third Act of the film updates the ideas with a clever parallel reality concept the whole cast do a good job considering the material they have to work with but there's no denying that some of the acting is rather awkward the interactions between characters don't always come off convincingly but I was watching with a mixed audience including a 13-year-old possibly closer to the target audience who seem to be enthralled and only winced occasionally at the tiate of terrible one miners thrown away by Matt Leblon as the handsome war hero major Don West sure he's cute as young Penny observes but he's also a caricature and his chauvinism though intended as ironic comes across as a little too much of a throwback for a modern man of 2058 his star appeal relied on Joey his character in The Long running as sitcom Friends and its fans would have enjoyed seeing him stepping out of character as a macho tough guy but without this context he comes across as uncomfortable and proves he's better suited to Comedy this being his sole role as an act hero apart from playing an actor who plays action heroes in Charlie Angels 2000 another update of a classic us TV series there are some fanping cameos from the original cast of the 1960s series June lockart who played Moren Robinson briefly appears via hologram as principal cartright Mark GD the original major West is now a general Marta Kristen and Angela cartright Judy and Penny Robinson both briefly appear as reporters at the press conference though you'd have to be quick to spot them surprisingly original Will Robinson actor Bill Mumy doesn't get a cameo wouldn't it have been great if he' played the older Will Robinson apparently the director thought it would be too distracting despite mummy being up for the part Jared Harris son of Richard does a good enough job in the role as the adult Will Robinson though and Jack Johnson plays the child version with a similar wide-eyed naivity as the original William Hurt and Mimi Rogers have both mastered understatement and do their best to hold things together as Mr and Mrs Robinson but AA goldsman script demands very little of them Heather Graham shines brightest as Dr Judy Robinson and for the most part compensates for Leong's Charisma deficit in the scenes they share the whole cast have excellent potential but are not shown in their best light there are a few scenes that do tug on the heartstrings particularly the reunion of Will and his father near the end Gary Oldman is of course brilliant as the smug and self serving Dr Zachary Smith but he doesn't get enough screen time the ambiguous dynamic between the Cowardly character of Smith and the young will was at the heart of the original series though this is not given the chance to develop at all here he's more definitely a villain and though given to Camp asides his lines are not as funny or clever as they might have been the orchestral score composed and conducted by Bruce Bron is suitably rousing and Grand enough to evoke epics from the old days however it is at times a little obtrusive perhaps we're now used to similar slick science fiction films having a pulsing technos score here the Techno tracks are held back for the end credits despite some obvious shortcomings Lost in Space remains hugely enjoyable and surprisingly undated its frenetic Pace seems very contemporary in its expectations of the audience's visual literacy and although some of its effects particularly The Opening space fighter dog fight do look a bit babyon 5 they're generally convincing and represent a real technical achievement The Narrative never really lets up and successfully avoids the drag factor that so many origin films fall foul of but in this case I think we could have spent more time getting to know the family instead of just a few compressed shorthand scenes it's chalk full of interesting ideas and brave Concepts the vision of the future is imaginative and is turning out to be a fairly accurate prediction except Penny's video diary which feels like social media media doesn't seem to be shared online the alternative time Paradox feels more Star Trek than Lost in Space the film is far from a failure but still doesn't totally work the main problem apart from some terrible dialogue is it just seems too rushed and desperate to set things up for plann sequels like many reboots of old material The Producers seem to want to have their cake and eat it appealing to the original fans who are now adults wanting more serious scares but also want to hook their children in what results is often a hotch poot that is too adult for the children and too childish for the adults and ends up pleasing neither although criticized by some for being too dark Lost in Space gets the balance about right still it gets a bit intense for younger children in Parts the body horror aspect when Smith mutates into a giant spider beast is the stuff of genuine nightmares though the digital animation for this creature effect has dated and is no longer convincing to Modern Eyes it reached the no one box office slot on its opening weekend thus ending Titanic's 15we Monopoly and overall performed well but not well enough to secure a sequel this may have been due a plethora of rather scathing reviews that seemed to miss the point that it was intended as a family film there was talk of a TV series and John Woo was even commissioned to direct the pilot but this never happened the Lost in Space movie still looks fresh today and remains great fun yes there is a dark darker feel than the original series and if we're being picky some of the special effects which were astounding at the time do look chintzy but they mostly hold up well if nothing else it messed with the formula enough to build a bridge between the idealistic sentimentality of the original and whatever the new Netflix reboot may surprise us with 111 Roger eert gave the film a rating of 1 and A2 out of four calling it a dimwitted shoot them up 12 Wade major of box office rated the film at 1 and a half out of 5 calling it the dumbest and least imaginative adaptation of a television series yet translated to the screen 13 James barard nelli was slightly more favorable giving the film a rating of 2 and 1/2 out of four while praising the film set design he criticized its Meandering storyline and lifeless protagonists saying that lost in space features a few action sequences that generate adrenaline jolts but this is not an edge of the seat Motion Picture 14 online aggregators have tracked both contemporary and recent reviews of Lost in Space at Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 27% based on 84 appraisals with an average score of four 9/10 the site's consensus reads clumsily directed and missing most of the TV series campy charm Lost in Space sadly lives down to its title 15 the film holds a score of 42 out of 100 on Metacritic based on the opinions of of 19 journalists indicating mixed or average reviews 16 audiences ped by cinemascore gave the film an average grade of B on in a plus to f scale Lost in Space is a dim witted shoot M up based on the old eye hesitate to say classic TV series it's got cheesy special effects a muddy visual look and characters who say obvious things in obvious ways if it outgross is the brilliant Dark City the previous sci-fi film from the same Studio then audiences must have lost their will to be entertained the TV series was Loosely modeled on the novel The Swiss Family Robinson about a family Shipwrecked far from home and using wit and Ingenuity to live off the land I love that book and especially it's detailed description of how the family made tools machines and a home for themselves and train the local Animals the movie doesn't bother with such details after a space battle that is the predictable curtain razor and a quick explanation of why and how the Robinson family is setting off for a planet called Alpha Prime the film takes place mostly on board their saucer shape ship and involves many more space battles showdowns struggles attacks hyperspace Journeys and exploding planets in between the characters plow through creaky dialogue and exhausted relationship problems imagine the film that could be made about a family marooned on a distant planet using what they could Salvage from their ship or forage from the environment that screenplay would take originality intelligence and but lost in space is one of those typing speed jobs where the screenwriter is like a stenographer rewriting what he's seen at the movies the story Earth will not survive another two decades Alpha Prime is the only other habitable planet mankind has discovered Prof John Robinson William Hurt and his family have been chosen to go there and construct a hypergate to match the gate at the earth end their Journey will involve years of suspended animation but once the other gate is functioning humans can zip instantaneously to Alpha Prime there needs to be a hypergate at both ends of course because otherwise there's no telling where a hyperdrive will land you as the Robinson's soon find out also on board are the professor's wife Mor Mimi Rogers Their scientist daughter Judy Robinson Heather Graham their younger daughter Penny Lacy chabbert and their son will Jack Johnson who is the brains of the outfit the ship is piloted by Ace space cadet Don West Matt Leblon and includes an intelligent robot who will help with the tasks at the other hand oh and lurking below deck is the evil doctor Zachary Smith Gary Oldman who wants to sabotage the mission but is trapped on board when the ship lifts off so he awakens the Robinson after which the ship is thrown off horon seems doomed to fall into the Sun Don West has a brainstorm they'll use the hyperdrive to zap right through the sun this strategy of course lands them in a galaxy far far away with a sky filled with unfamiliar stars and then the movie ticks off a series of crises of which I can enumerate a rebellious robot and exploding Planet mechanical space spiders a distracting romance and family issues of trust and Authority the movie might at least have been more fun to look at if it had been filmed in brighter colors director Steven Hopkins and his cinematographer Peter Levy for some reason choose a murky muted pette everything looks like a drab brown suit or a cheap rotor graier you want to use some Windex on the screen and Bruce Bron's musical score saws away tirelessly with counter fate excitement when nothing of interest is happening on the screen it just makes it worse when the music pretends it cares of the performances what can be said except that William Hurt Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers deserve medals for remaining standing the kids are standard issue juveniles with straight teeth and good posture and there is a monkey-like little alien pet who looks as if he comes from a world where all living beings are clones of Felix the Cat this is the kind of movie that if it fell into a black hole you wouldn't be able to tell the difference Lost in Space is new line Cinema's bid to enter the space franchise race undoubtedly impressed by the long-term consistent profitability of Paramount Star Trek movie the nth of which will be released this year new line has decided to resurrect another late 60s science fiction television Enterprise Lost in Space admittedly 30 years ago there weren't many similarities between the two programs Star Trek was a relatively serious socially conscious series while Lost in Space became infected with what I'll call the Batman sickness and over the course of its 4-year run devolved from a semi-straight program into pure Camp much of that silliness has been removed for this big budget big screen effort fans of the original Lost in Space will likely not be displeased by the direction this movie takes in addition to retaining the basic premise of the series all of the characters are back as well right down to the nameless robot whose voice is provided by the same man who did the job in the TV program dick twel there are also cameos by four of the 60s cast June lockart who played Moren Robinson Mark GD Don West Angela cartright Penny Robinson and martta Kristen Judy Robinson despite all of these nods to the Past however the special effects are strictly state-of-the-art unfortunately there's not much to supplement all the eye popping visuals the story is unfocused and the character development is virtually non-existent one of the problems is that lost in space uses more than 30 minutes setting up the plot and it's not a particularly interesting half hour if a strong box office response warrants future installments at least we will have gotten over this tedious hurdle the remainder of the film is divided into two parts the investigation of a seemingly deserted spaceship and the exploration of an inhospitable Planet all the while the space traveling Family Robinson are trying to find their way home while dealing with a dangerous doorway it's 2058 and Earth is a Dying World the Robinson John William Hurt Moren Mimi Rogers Judy Heather Graham Penny Lacy chabbert EML Jack Johnson along with their pilot Don West Matt leelong have boarded the spaceship Jupiter 2 on a colonization mission to the planet Alpha Prime thanks to a stoway sabot named Dr Smith Gary Oldman things don't go as planned 16 hours out of Earth orbit disaster strikes the Jupiter 2 and to keep the ship from plunging into the sun west is forced to activate the hyperdrive which saves the ship but throws it light years across the Galaxy into Uncharted space seven people and one robot are lost looking for the way back to Earth the set design in Lost in Space is impressive the interior of the spaceship is suitably futuristic looking while the earth-based scenes with their visually stunning backdrops recall last year's The Fifth Element most of the model sequences are equally Flawless but the computer generated spider like aliens have the same flaw exhibited by similar creatures and Starship Troopers They look fake on the whole however Lost in Space has a polished High budget appearance too bad some of the effects money wasn't spent on the script Lost in Space is infected with a Meandering storyline and lifeless protagonists without a clear narrative drive there doesn't seem to be much of a point to the whole Endeavor the desire to get home doesn't generate the level of urgency one might reasonably expect and the movie ends up feeling like a few episodes of Star Trek voyagers strung together there isn't a clear villain either since Dr Smith is more of an anti-hero than anything else's motivation is self-interest not malice in the TV series Smith as portrayed by Jonathan Harris was the standout and Oldman does a superb job Reinventing the character bringing back many of Harris mannerisms while leaving his own indelible Mark Smith becomes a fascinating blend of Charisma and delicious nastiness Beyond Oldman however the cast is disappointingly Bland as John and Morin Robinson William Hurt and Mimi Rogers fizzle Heather Graham who was one wonderful as roller girl and Boogie Nights fails to do anything interesting with Judy friends Matt leblang displays no range whatsoever only the two children helium voed Lacy chabbert and cool as a cucumber Jack Johnson show signs of having a pulse chabbert especially shows spunk but she has the least screen time of the major players incidentally it could be argued that it wouldn't have mattered if everyone in the cast had been in Peak acting form since the script delivers the kind of two-dimensional characters in involved in Shallow relationships that even top-notch performances couldn't do much with Lost in Space features a few action sequences that generate adrenaline jolts but this is not an edge of the seat motion picture and to satisfy the kitty crowd there's the likable robot and a friendly read cute alien called blop which is the product of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and seems designed to appeal to younger audience members this may add to the film's attraction in some quarters but not as far as I'm concerned I wanted a little more energy and a story that went somewhere as a result while I can offer a mild endorsement of Lost in Space as a comic book come to life it's too weak a film for me to stamp with an unqualified recommendation as a lover of Sci fiction I'm truly surprised this film didn't continue on with more sequels being based on the 1960s hit TV series Lost in Space by Irwin Allen where everything was very colorful and dialogue was quite intelligent and witty to a more dark industrial look where the dialogue is filled with trivial onliners the movie had a lot to live up to but of course it always comes down to money and harsh critics had the gross income been higher there was plans for all assigned actors to be a part of a film Trilogy how Grand that would have been despite what the critics thought I thought it was funny and edgy but had the potential to be fantastic had the dialogue been scripted better think about it what's not to love about an intelligent family taking off in space with an enemy aboard ship and getting lost the stories would have been endless apparently in the TV show back in the day there was a lot of banter between the two Brilliant Minds of opposing forces Young Will Robinson and Dr Zachary Smith but there was not enough of this shown in the film unfortunately it would have delighted audiences with laughter appealing to every age directed by Steven Hopkins written by Akiva goldsman and produced by Mark W Steven Hopkins Akiva goldsman and Carla fry there were some cool actors in This film that I felt needed more recognition for one Gary Olman as the villain Dr Zachary Smith who always brings characters to life secondly Lacy chabbert as The Sassy theatrical teenager Penny Robinson and last but not least Matt leblan as the studly major Don West to be honest I never realized just how in shape Matt LeBlanc was at this point of his career until I'd seen this film on the hit TV show Friends where he played Joey tribon a man with much charm but not much brains you can see the resemblance between his two characters except major West is majorly rough around the edges and looks badass let me paint a picture for you the time is now 2058 and technology has advanced so far that humans are capable of traveling to distant Stars though no one has dared to travel to the Extremes in search of new live able planets that in until now professor John Robinson starring William Hurt along with his wife Professor Moren Robinson starring nimi Rogers decide to take their family along for a space cruise through the unknown but their mission is sabotaged by their physician Dr Smith Oldman who just so happens to be a spy as luck would have it Dr Smith became stranded on their ship leaving the crew with problematic situations at times while other times he was exactly the help they needed but they recruited the best pilot they could have asked for major W LeBlanc and a humorous mechanical robot who loves to say danger Will Robinson so while the whole premise of the movie is about finding hope amongst the stars in order to save Humanity since Earth is losing resources fast it ends up being about how will Robinson wants his father to realize how precious love is or how precious he is something to that extent whatever the case the movie is filled with both action and adventure through space and a joy to watch I enjoyed it though like I said before it lacked the potential to be something Grand my favorite parts were the penny Vision segments where Penny Robinson would poetically journalize her life into her watch I could clearly see the future Mean Girls Gretchen Wieners before her time but in IMO mode compared to John Robinson's hyper engine responsible for the ship's ability to jump through space or will Robinson's uncanny ability to form a friendship with a robot and recreate him or even the time machine that will Robinson kept going on about which surprisingly proved to be true eventually I still find her watch to be the coolest invention of all all I could think about was how much I wanted one during the film my other favorite parts were when the camera angles were shown through the inside of the ship from the perspective of the crew aboard and you felt like you were taken along for the ride I would love to see a 3D ride be made of Lost in Space how dope would that be almost would have the feel of the Back to the Future ride in Universal Studios but all space and all mystery I found a line that stuck with me as a child since I first saw this film said by Dr Smith evil knows evil even at a young age I understood that quote and I understand it even more now as an adult another great line said by doctor Smith is when major West forces him to tag along he says I'm a doctor not a space Explorer homage to doctor McCoy in Star Trek 1966 when he says I'm a doctor not a brick layer Heather Graham also stars in this film as Dr Judy Robinson who major West has the hots for and is the engineer of the ship but apparently the director had his eye of her as well since the two were dating during filming it's cool to know that most of the original cast members from the original TV show were cast as cameos in this film but I think the most surprisingly cool fact about this film is that the 1960s Lost in Space show was set in 1997 which is when the film production began coincidence I think not overall I think this movie was a hoot to watch and I found the idea of it to be Exquisite I give this movie six 51 Stars when the movie ends you begin to question what happened to them where did they end up when what will become of Dr Smith and what's with the alien monkey blark all questions that never get answered unfortunately but a new Netflix show is in the works and I'm looking forward to seeing it so keep your eyes out for it the film which is currently available to stream on Netflix wastes no time getting started after the old new line Cinema logo flies by we're treated to a voiceover from a sleepy voice William Hurt detailing one of those pollution destroyed the Earth so now we have to find a new home sci-fi scenarios there are rival factions fighting over who gets to be the first to colonize the new planet honestly there's even more to it than just that but before you have time to process everything you're watching Matt LeBlanc played Major Don West and Morgan from The Walking Dead trade gay Panic jokes as they pilot spaceships and track down bad guys it's an admirably busy opening with director Steven Hopkins clearly wanting to drop audiences straight into the action like an especially caffeinated Star Wars but it's also rather pointless the bad guys liong shoots down the plot forgets all about them just a couple of minutes later the flashy orange I Tech Lon uses to help with targeting this is its one and only appearance in the film still it was enough to fool me into thinking this Lost in Space movie might not be so bad after all at least the special effects don't look quite so terrible and lebl Lang's false bravado is instantly fun to mock he could have benefited from some more lessons in the Trib School of acting might we actually have a semi-competent late 90s Space movie on our hand danger Kelly's misplaced optimism we then meet the Robinson family led by genius work John hurt his technological breakthroughs will allow humans to successfully leave the planet and he's volunteered his own family wife moring Mimi Rogers daughters Judy of post Boogie night/ pre Austin Powers Heather Graham and Penny party of five's Lacy chabbert who talks into a video recorder on her wrist like an early version of vlogging and sonka genius will Jack Johnson know not that Jack Johnson to be the guinea pigs Lee blanks West is the highly annoyed hotot pilot assigned the baby task of escorting the Robinsons on their 10-year Journey almost all of which will take place in hypersleep of course their mission goes Haywire almost immediately soon enough there's a scheming Gary Oldman over the top as always rampaging robot voiced by dick teld just as he did for the 60s TV series an unbelievably fake looking CGI spiders to contend with and a series of time travel dependent twists that create plot holes the size of Jupiter you do get to see a youngish Jared Harris won't spoil who he plays clearly having all of his dialogue dubbed by someone else a bizarre site which either adds to Lost in spaces so bad it's good enjoyment factor or simply piles on the misery I can't decide which one not surprisingly William Hurt looks like he'd rather be anywhere else and his familiar Arc of being a workaholic father who needs to pay more attention to his kids never fully connects Matt Le blanks meant to be playing the can't believe I got stuck on this stupid Mission with these yals but it comes off as almost sociopathic and impossibly creepy he hits on Judy pretty much non-stop often an earshot distance from her dad the Robinson family never really feels like an actual family the women in the story spend nearly the entire second half putting on their best worried face while looking out a view screen the special effects quickly take a turn into astonishingly bad territory the time travel plot doesn't make much sense I blame Mission Impossible or or The Fugitive or The Brady Bunch Movie or maybe just all of them Hollywood after all has never met a good idea it couldn't run into the ground and when the first half of the '90s gave us a couple of successful film adaptations of old TV shows the tail end of the decade gave us crap like Lost in Space the Avengers and wild wild west as a kid of the '90s though I'd somehow gone all this time without ever seeing Lost in Space it came out in 1998 at which point I was already in the bag for anything friends or party of five related plus I recall having a crush on Mimi Rogers lost in the space ticked all three of those boxes yet the word of mouth was so so toxic I stayed away even when Best Buy later gave me a free DVD copy of the film along with wild wild west The Perfect Storm and two others with my first DVD player I still never gave it a look that's one DVD that went straight to the garage sale pile and until Netflix came along along with its reboot I forgot all about Lost in Space both the 60s show and 98 film I grown to believe Matt Leong's filmography couldn't sink any lower than that chimpanzee baseball movie I was wrong as ci.com recently declared in its own Lost in Space retrospective it's rare to see a movie that fails on just about every level kudos for pulling that off I guess Lost in Space is a movie which always feels like it's in a rush even though it's over 2 hours long long as if barreling to the next action set piece will distract from the poor performances tonally challenged script and atrocious visuals ultimately they tried to make a gritty action film out of a campy old Sci-Fi show yet now it is the Netflix series which is trying to be the gritty reboot to the campy old movie so let this serve as a Remer for whenever we might want to complain about the current state of the Hollywood Blockbuster as Lost in Space shows it's not like these things were so much better 20 years ago Lost in Space 1965 1968 is irrevocably a product of its time the mid 1960s as a series it combined fairy tale Whimsy and innocence with a schizophrenic approach to science and the future on one hand the Robinson Pioneers possessed all of this wonderful Space Age Matt Mason likee technology to make their lives easier and on the other hand the same technology had stranded them in some Far corner of the universe Lost in Space on TV also featured this scrip mid 1960s Space Age paraphernalia boxy oversized and predominantly silver with lots of blinking Bright Lights there was a cond do attitude a hold over from Camelot perhaps at work in the series too despite the premise of being lost and love or hate the Dr Smith role and the use to which the character was put during three tumultuous Seasons Jonathan Harris exhibited incredible commitment to that role in the 1998 Lost in Space movie after absolutely no expense was spared in terms of special effects in terms of sets and in terms of lead actors but somehow the movie doesn't connect on the same simple human level that the series did on a weekly basis the filmmakers Apparently believe we want to see in this franchise weaving spaceships and lots and lots of fireballs they think that's the why of Lost in Space though the Irwin Allen series could afford no such bells and whistles or perhaps the movie doesn't work because in a bow to reality and the drastic changes in American culture the new Lost in Space family is portrayed as wholly dysfunctional and somewhat unpleasant this is an attempt to make the family oriented property fit and better during a new era to reflect our 1990s era domestic reality but it's nonetheless a change that isn't entirely welcome it's very much the same problem that plagued the new Battlestar Galactica reimagination there's a vast difference between a family facing challenges and crises from the outside a kind of Little House on the Prairie template where life throws ample challenges at you and facing internal personal character flaws such as alcoholism or narcissism in a dramatic crisis situation and sci-fi setting like the extermination of the human race or being Lost in Space viewers want to see I believe characters clinging together and fighting the elements as it were not battling personal subplots about alcoholism that were trite when As the World Turns vetted them 30 years ago I think people want to see the best of mankind kind fighting the syons or space spiders not the worst of us or finally maybe this 1988 movie fails simply because some of the casting doesn't seem based on who is best for the role but who boasts the most Marquee value Matt leblan in particular doesn't exude the intelligence necessary to portray a believable space pilot his gum chewing horn toad comes off as hopelessly and irrevocably dumb his dialogue consisting of lines like yea show time and laugh one to get a bad guy buys the beer is Bal on a level that the old TV series could not even have conceived critics generally weren't impressed with Lost in Space writing in the New York Times Janet Maslin wrote this lost in space is much more chaotic and less innocent than its source Roger eert accurately termed the film dimwitted and the San Francisco Chronicle called it a warm wallow in the cinema of the Dum down all these critics were chipping away at the of one particularly relevant argument that childlike innocence has been supplanted by a kind of witless breathlessness the original Lost in Space wasn't Shakespeare to be certain but nor was it patently overtly cheerfully dubbed some episodes even today play as lyrical Fairy Tales stories of family values reasserted in a Land of extraterrestrial magic and occasional Terror you can't look back honestly at some of those old black and white stories like my friend Mr Nobody one of our dogs is missing or the magic mirror without feeling a sense of wondrous childlike imagination if not strict Devotion to establish science it might have more in common with the Wizard of Oz than Star Trek but Lost in Space the TV series had something especially in those early black and white Days by contrast the Lost in Space movie seeks to hammer the audience with a pile up of catastrophic incidents many admittedly interesting at least initially and at the same time pay lip service to the family values Vibe of the original in a bit of too clever criticism the movies Dr Smith asks at one point will every little problem be an excuse for family sentiment that is precisely the movie's modus operandi to its ultimate detriment in 2058 Earth is on the edge of Oblivion the environment is dying and the only hope for survival is to colonize a farway world Alpha Prime to do so however two hyper Gates must be built one in Earth orbit and one in orbit of alpha Prime when both are up and running Colony ships can jump instantly from one point to the other and the relocation of man can begin professor John Robinson William Hurt leads a mission to Alpha Prime to construct the second hyper gate because of the long duration of the mission a decade his family comes along aboard the Jupiter 2 among the crew are his wife Moren Robinson Mimi Rogers physician Judy Robinson Heather Graham petulant teenager Penny Lacy chabbert and boy Genius will Jack Johnson but Professor Robinson's problems begin when a new less than Cooperative Hot Shot pilot major West Matt LeBlanc assumes the role of pilot on Jupiter 2 and a sabur from the global sedition Dr Smith Gary Oldman programs the ship's robot dick twell to destroy the Robinsons once the craft is in Flight averting a disaster in Space the Jupiter 2 jumps through the Sun and becomes hopelessly lost in space and time the Robinsons run a foul of strange alien spiders on a deric spaceship and later crash land on an inhospitable planet where they encounter their future tragically altered selves there in that Peak into a dark future Jon gets the chance to see how his absence as a father has affected a grown-up will space combines a number of plots from the old TV series including elements of The Reluctant dway the derelict and any episode in which Dr Smith makes trouble for the Robinson's by interfacing with alien biologi technology or Personnel Wish Upon a Star Ghost In Space the space Trader his majesty Smith All That Glitters the dream monster and so on the film directed by Steven Hopkins also attempts Fidelity in terms of production design the Jupiter 1 in the film looks much like the TV series Jupiter 2 for instance and before the end of the movie the newer high-tech robot has been rebuilt by Will to resemble the popular B9 that famous bubble-headed booby and cousin to Robbie the robot even the Interiors look like faithful if updated reconstructions of the 1960 sets only with more curves and a more organic feel of all the cast LeBlanc fares the worst he is utterly unlikable as West and given the worst dialogue to vet William Hurt seems bored and disconnected as Professor Robinson Mimi Rogers and Heather Graham are okay and only Gary Oldman absolutely shines in fact oldman's version of the treacherous Dr Smith character feels like a real tribute to Jonathan Harris coming off as arrogantly self-important and straddling the line between good and evil Oldman Minds considerable humor and Menace from the screenplay and is the movie's Most Valuable Player he's great here the most contrived portions of Lost in Space involve Morin's unceasing complaints about Jon's time she constantly nags him about spending more hours with will even though she also has two daughters and he doesn't spend any time with them either so yes apparently only young boys not young girls require quality time with their father who knew the world would be so sexist still in 2058 I guess we know who wins the war on women more crucially moren's complaints come off as rather selfish and small given the context of what's happening around her John Robinson is struggling to save the planet Earth and the human race and sure it would be nice if he could attend his son's science fair but I wager his priorities are just about right in fact I bet if we were given a choice he'd decide that his dad should you know Save the Planet so that all kids can enjoy science fairs for years to come but John needs to spend more time with Will subplot is a manufactured crisis and a contrivance that isn't truly believable given the narrative details the movie sort of proves it's a non-issue when the older will even with spider Smith as a serate father does the right thing to save the universe and his family I guess John imparted some good qualities to his boy in the time he had he may be busy again saving the world but he isn't negligent or absent again the old series didn't contend with these IMO touches the Robinsons were essentially space pioneers and well the planet had to be tamed John Robinson Guy Williams was always there for his son if Will Bill mummy needed him but there wasn't this constant hand ringing on the TV series about how much time the two were spending together here the subplot is a little touchy Fey and unrealistic given the circumstances bottom line there's not a lot of time for father child closeness when your spaceship is plunging into the sun battling metal spiders Crash Landing or hovering at the edge of a dangerous SpaceTime bubble sorry kid suck it up even family must as we all know too well bow to reality and I generally resent movies that suggest everything would be okay if a dad and son just spent a little more time together meanwhile the planet is falling apart another problem with the film is that in post-production apparently someone decided that the film needed to be funnier therefore we get an out of left field The Walton's joke and good night John Boy delivered an embarrassed voice over the problem isn't that the joke isn't funny though it isn't the problem is that it doesn't fit the scene we get a nice Fade Out on John and Morin about to have sex and then the very next instant we're on to a sound queue of the same two characters saying good night to each other and the kids like this is the galactic Brady Bunch like so much of the film's humor it's grown inducing as in congruous as that moment Remains the space creature that the Robinsons discover blop is even worse he has been crafted to look absolutely ridiculous the design of this alien might have fit in on the original series 40 years ago but it in no way fits the pallet of the 19 98 film blob doesn't look like the product of a universe that includes the movie Robinson's and the truly scary alien metal spiders instead blop looks as though he was shipped in from the Funny Pages Circa 1959 every time the creature appears his presence takes you right out of the reality of the movie it's not just that the creature is composed of bad CGI it's that the visualization of the creature is all wrong for the earthy production canvas fanciful and Whimsical in a movie of skin tight bodysuits and dark Browns and Grays despite my reservations about the movie Lost in Space begins relatively well even though the opening space battle between the global sedition and United Global space force is entirely unnecessary the first hour of the film establishes well the threat to Earth the First Act boasts a decent pace and there's a respectable level of excitement and anticipation the battle on the alien derelict against the metal spiders is also thrilling from the point however in which Jon goes into the time bubble the movie gets lost itself lost and incoherent as the movie ends future will throws present John through a Time Vortex but it isn't entirely clear if West already has the power cells the Jupiter 2 needs for liftoff if Jon has them or a future will still has them why is the Jupiter 2 attempting escape velocity without the power source it needs why isn't anyone commenting on essentially a suicide run then the movie ends without resolving Dr Smith's crisis he's slowly turning into a giant spider monster but there are no attempts to treat the condition or even quarantine the guy the movie ends without even a hint of resolution on this front but this is after John the robot and Smith himself have seen his future manifestation I very much doubt Smith would stay silent knowing he is carrying an infection that will transform him into a giant arachnid also lost in space never squares the circle in terms of the future the robot of the future comes back in time to the Jupiter 2 but in the real timeline will never finishes building that robot so if he does there will be two robots if he doesn't finish work on the robot then where did the robot come from having never actually been constructed by will I'm not saying that this is an unworkable dilemma only that the movie might have made note of the time Paradox a joke about it would have been fine as a general premise Lost in Space boasts great potential even today the idea of a family alone on an alien world trying to make a go of things offers nearly infinite story ideas you don't have to make the movie schaly or wall-to-wall action to make the scenario work effectively you just need a few characters you like some tough conditions and a sense that as a family the Pioneers will stick together and see the mission through no matter the challenges but this lost in space wants to hit you on the head Within congruous platitudes about family a lot like the Dark Shadows remake I reviewed on Tuesday and then wow you with special effects explosions although I felt a legitimate thrill hearing dick tufeld voice the robot again in this film I remember well 1998 and my discontent regarding this film it remains a lost opportunity and an emotionally Hollow Adventure Hollywood seems hooked on needlessly REM making classic movies and now the trend seems to have shifted to television series reboot of Plenty try to reinvent them for new audiences whilst exploiting The Nostalgia of their original fan base now an update of Irwin Allen's Lost in Space is set to debut on Netflix 20 years after a failed attempt to reboot it as a cinematic franchise the original Lost in Space was a well-loved though somewhat wacky Golden Age science fiction series that ran for three seasons between 1965 to 68 it followed the exploits of the Robinson family who set off into space to escape AP in Earth threatened by collision with a comet they were joined by a state-of-the-art robot and mad scientist who' been trying to sabotage their vessel but instead wound up becoming an accidental stoway the series was inspired by Swiss Family Robinson but more likely the hugely popular 1960 Disney film rather than the original 1812 novel by Johan David whis which was written as an education and Christian family values in irn Allen's update the family are marooned on a Planet rather than an Uncharted Island 30 years after the series ended its run a big screen reboot was preceded by an extensive promotional campaign that included a tie-in with clothing company spak who were to provide the futuristic flight jackets for the cast there were also teaser posters emblazoned with the catchphrase danger Will Robinson a line that was reportedly only used once during the entire Show's run perhaps some of that promotional budget would have been better spent on development ah ahead of production or maybe on the production itself which by all accounts was a rushed toir from script to screen the cliched script by AA Goldman coming off the Batman and Robin debacle could well have benefited from a few redrafts in this version with director Steven Hopkins at the helm the Robinson family set off from Earth as Pioneers to Kickstart the colonization of a distant habitable planet Earth is doomed not by a comet but by humans as we've used up all its resources and now pollution famine and War threatened to end civilization in decades apparently Recycling and green energy was just placating propaganda and nothing can avert our planet's impending doom the problem is exacerbated by an eastwest conflict and a terrorist organization known as the global sedition intent on defeating the white Devils of the West and reaching the new planet first this political eastwest divide contemporize the film and remains painfully relevant today for the most part the production hardly seems dated its vision of the future is well realized with the characters accepting and using fantastic new fangled gadgetry some of which has actually been developed over the decades since there's also nice attention to detail in every little display and readout and the overall look of the film props costume set is very slick the production design is incredibly cool and it took an army of Carpenters plasters and sculptures to build the extensive Jupiter two Interiors at shepperton Studios the special effects were remarkable for 1998 using both green screen and digital Composites to combine sets motion control Miniatures and virtual models from the mid 1990s small independent digital effects houses were springing up around the world and the production made the most of its budget by Outsourcing the effects to smaller companies Beyond Hollywood establishing this as a new decentralized production approach the film unpicks threads from several episodes of the TV series and reweaves them into a more compressed narrative the discovery of a gargantuan abandoned spaceship in this case the Proteus inexplicably maroon from the future and harboring a nasty alien surprise is a storyline taken from the the derelict the second episode of the series The flyby sequence is very reminiscent of Event Horizon 1997 where the Lewis and Clark approaches a similar dormant Hulk and here the film takes a darker turn for a few minutes drawing on Haunted House tropes it ALS Al brought to mind Disney's the black hole 1979 and there are passing similarities between the robot designs in both films pretty soon the mood lifts again with the discovery of an alien creature that looks to have stepped from the cover of Amazing Stories or similar Golden Age science fiction magazines Penny Lacy chabbert is taken by its cuteness and volunteers to be its carer and trainer usually the cute thing put in solely to amuse younger viewers ends up being both embarrassing and annoying but BL as she names it doesn't intrude too much for its time the integration of this cartoonish computer generated character courtesy of the Jim Hensen Creature Shop with live actors was an adventurous experiment Lop helps to lighten the tone as the film becomes quite intense at times including the escape from the Proteus pursued by ravenous Unstoppable metallic space spiders from which not everyone emerges unscathed this is a rather cumbersome action sequence that's little more than a straightforward shoot him up seemingly with one eye on the computer game tie and Market the kid and me was excited by the holographic interface that enables young will to operate the robot by remote control a very clever device to allow a child to take part in the action whilst effectively keeping Will Robinson out of danger the robot is destroyed in the battle with alien spiders and will later rebuild it to more closely resemble the 1960s version another clever nod to the original is the design of the Robinson spaceship Jupiter 2 at its launch it is recognizable as being the vessel from the TV series but this turns out to be only a protective shell which is promptly shed once in space for the new sleer curvier vessel to emerge and bring us into a more 1990s vision of the future the film comes across as episodic and certainly falls into the threea format the first two roughly following the setup of the original series first two episodes in the escape the Jupiter 2 is damaged and crash lands on a a nearby Planet as in the original series the first survival challenge the planet throws at them is extreme cold they soon detect a power source that seems to be compatible with their own depleted reserves but it appears to be within a weird time bubble the original series included several episodes featuring time warps and played with different versions of the characters from alternative time streams without spoiling things too much the third Act of the film updates these ideas with a clever parallel reality concept the whole cast do a good job considering the material they have to work with but there's no denying that some of the acting is rather awkward the interactions between characters don't always come off convincingly but I was watching with a mixed audience including a 13-year-old possibly closer to the target audience who seemed to be enthralled and only winced occasionally at the tiate of terrible on miners thrown away by Matt LeBlanc as the handsome war hero major Don West sure he's cute as young Penny observed but he's also a caricature and his chauvinism though intended as ironic comes across as a little too much of a throwback for a modern man of 2058 his star appeal relied on Joey his character in The Long running as sitcom Friends and its fans would have enjoyed seeing him stepping out of character as a macho tough guy but without this context he comes across as uncomfortable and proves he's better suited to Comedy this being his sole role as an action hero apart from playing an actor who plays action heroes in Charlie's Angels 2000 another update of a classic us TV series there are some fan-pleasing cameos from the original cast of the 1960s series Jun lockart who played Moren Robinson briefly appears via hologram as principal cartright Mark GD the original major West is now a general Marta Kristen and Angela cwright Judy and Penny Robinson both briefly appear as reporters at the press conference though you'd have to be quick to spot them surprisingly original Will Robinson actor Bill mummy doesn't get a cameo wouldn't it have been great if he played the older Will Robinson apparently the director thought it would be too distracting despite mummy being up for the part Jared Harris son of Richard does a good enough job in the role as the adult Will Robinson though and Jack Johnson plays the child version with a similar wide-eyed naivity as the original William Hurt and Mimi Rogers have both mastered understatement and do their best to hold things together as mister and Mrs Robinson but AA goldsman script demands very little of them Heather Graham shines brightest as Dr Judy Robinson and for the most part compensates for leblanc's Charisma deficit in the scenes they share the whole cast have excellent potential but are not shown in their best life there are a few scenes that do tug on the heartstrings particularly the reunion of Will and his father near the end Gary Oldman is of course brilliant as the smug and self-serving Dr Zachary Smith but he doesn't get enough scream time the ambiguous dynamic between the Cowardly character of Smith and the young will was at the heart of the original series though this is not given the chance to develop at all here he's more definitely a villain and though given to Camp asides his lines are not as funny or clever as they might have been the orchestral score composed and conducted by Bruce Bron is suitably rousing and Grand enough to evoke epics from the old days however it is at times a little obtrusive perhaps were now used to similar slick science fiction films having a pulsing techn score here the Techno tracks are held back for the end credits despite some obvious shortcomings Lost in Space remains hugely enjoyable and surprisingly undated its frenetic Pace seems very contemporary in its expectations of the audience's visual literacy and although some of its effects particularly The Opening space fighter dog fight do look a bit babyon 5 they're generally convincing and represent a real technical achievement The Narrative never really lets up and successfully avoids the drag factor that so many origin films fall foul of but in this case I think we could have spent more time getting to know the family instead of just a few compressed shorthand scenes it's chalk full of interesting ideas and brave Concepts the vision of the future is imaginative and is turning out to be a fairly accurate prediction except Penny's video diary which feels like social media doesn't seem to be shared online the alternative time Paradox feels more Star Trek than Lost in Space the film is far from a failure but still doesn't totally work the main problem apart from some terrible dialogue is it just seems too rushed and desperate to set things up for plan sequels like many reboots of old material The Producers seem to want to have their cake and eat it appealing to the original fans who are now adults wanting more serious scares but also want to hook their children in what results is often a hotch poot that is too adult for the children and too childish for the adults and ends up pleasing neither although criticized by some for being too dark Lost in Space gets the balance about right still it gets a bit intense for younger children in Parts the body horror aspect when Smith mutates into a giant spider beast is the stuff of genuine nightmares though the digital animation for this creature effect has dated and is no longer convincing to Modern Eyes it reached the no one box office slot on its opening we weekend thus ending Titanic's 15we Monopoly and overall performed well but not well enough to secure a sequel this may have been due a plethora of rather scathing reviews that seemed to miss the point that it was intended as a family film there was talk of a TV series and John Woo was even commissioned to direct the pilot but this never happened the Lost in Space movie still looks fresh today and remains great fun yes there is a darker feel than the original series and if we're being picky some of the special effects which were astounding at the time do look chintzy but they mostly hold up well if nothing else it messed with the formula enough to build a bridge between the idealistic sentimentality of the original and whatever the new Netflix reboot may surprise us with online aggregators have tracked both contemporary and recent reviews of Lost in Space at Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 27% based on 84 appraisals with an average score of four 910 the site's consensus reads clumsily directed and missing most of the TV series campy charm Lost in Space sadly lives down to its title 15 the film holds a score of 42 out of 100 on Metacritic based on the opinions of 19 journalists indicating mixed or average reviews 16 audiences told by cinemascore gave the film an average grade of B on an A plus to f scale Lost in Space is a dimwitted shoe M up based on the old eyee hesitate to say classic TV series it's got cheesy special effects a muddy visual look and characters who say obvious things in obvious ways if it outg grosses the brilliant dark city the previous sci-fi film from the same Studio then audiences must have lost their will to be entertained the TV series was Loosely modeled on the novel The Swiss Family Robinson about a family Shipwrecked far from from home and using wit and Ingenuity to live off the land I love that book and especially it's detailed description of how the family made tools machines and a home for themselves and trained the local Animals the movie doesn't bother with such details after a space battle that is the predictable curtain razor and a quick explanation of why and how the Robinson family is setting off for a planet called Alpha Prime the film take Place mostly on board their saucer shaped ship and involves many more space battles Showdown struggles attacks hyperspace Journeys and exploding planets in between the characters plow through creaky dialogue and exhausted relationship problems imagine the film that could be made about a family marooned on a distant planet using what they could Salvage from their ship or forage from the environment that screenplay would take origin ity intelligence and but lost in space is one of those typing speed jobs where the screen writer is like a stenographer rewriting what he's seen at the movies the story Earth will not survive another two decades Alpha Prime is the only other habitable planet mankind has discovered Prof John Robinson William Hurt and his family have been chosen to go there and construct a hypergate to match the gate at the earth end their Journey will involve years of suspended animation but once the other gate is functioning humans can zip instantaneously to Alpha Prime there needs to be a hypergate at both ends of course because otherwise there's no telling where a hyperdrive will land you as the Robinson's soon find out also on board are the professor's wife Mor Mimi Rogers Their scientist daughter Judy Robinson Heather Graham their younger daughter Penny Lacy chabbert and their son will Jack Johnson who is the brains of the outfit the ship is piloted by Ace Bas Cadet Don West Matt Leblon and includes an intelligent robot who will help with the tasks at the other hand oh and lurking below deck is the evil doctor Zachary Smith Gary Oldman who wants to sabotage the mission but is trapped on board when the ship lifts off so he awakens the Robinson after which the ship is thrown off Corson seems doomed to fall into the Sun Don West has a brainstorm they'll use the hyperdrive to zap right through the sun this strategy of course lands them in a galaxy far far away with a sky filled with unfamiliar stars and then the movie ticks off a series of crises of which I can enumerate a rebellious robot and exploding Planet mechanical space spiders a distracting romance and family issues of trust and Authority the movie might at least have been more fun to look at if it had been filmed in brighter colors director Steven Hopkins and his cinematographer Peter Levy for some reason choose a murky muted pallette everything looks like a drab brown suit or a cheap rotor grab your you want to use some Windex on the screen and Bruce Bron's musical score saws away tirelessly with counterfeit excitement when nothing of interest is happening on the screen it just makes it worse when the music pretends it cares of the performances what can be said except that William Hurt Gary Oldman and Mimi Rogers deserve medals for remaining standing the kids are standard issue juveniles with straight teeth and good posture and there is a monkey like little alien pet who looks as if he comes from a world where all living beings are clones of Felix the Cat this is the kind of movie that if it fell into a black hole you wouldn't be able to tell the difference Lost in Space is new line Cinema's bid to enter the space franchise race undoubtedly impressed by the long-term consistent profitability of Paramount Star Trek movies the ninth of which will be released this year new line has decided to resurrect another late 60s science fiction television Enterprise Lost in Space admittedly 30 years ago there weren't many similarities between the two programs Star Trek was a relatively serious socially conscious series while Lost in Space became infected with what I'll call the Batman sickness and over the course of its 4-year run devolved from a semi-straight program into pure Camp much of that silliness has been removed for this big budget big screen effort fans of the original Lost in Space will likely not be displeased by the direction this movie takes in addition to retaining the basic premise of the series all of the characters are back as well write down to the nameless robot whose voice is provided by the same man who did the job in the TV program dick teld there are also cameos by four of the 60s cast June lockart who played Moren Robinson Mark Gard Don West Angela cite Penny Robinson and martta Christen Judy Robinson despite all of these nods to the Past however the special effects are strictly state-of-the-art unfortunately there's not much to supplement all the eye popping visuals the story is unfocused and the character development is virtually non-existent one of the problems is that lost in space uses more than 30 minutes setting up the plot and it's not a particularly interesting half hour if a strong box office response Warren's future installments at least we will have gotten over this tedious hurdle the remainder of the film is divided into two parts the investigation of a seemingly deserted spaceship and the exploration of an inhospitable Planet all the while the space traveling Family Robinson are are trying to find their way home while dealing with a dangerous doorway it's 2058 and Earth is a Dying World the Robinson John William Hurt Moren nimi Rogers Judy Heather Graham Penny Lacy chabbert Emil Jack Johnson along with their pilot Don West Matt Leong have boarded the spaceship Jupiter 2 on a colonization mission to the planet Alpha Prime thanks to a stoway sabot named Dr Smith Gary Oldman things don't go as planned 16 hours out of Earth orbit disaster strikes the Jupiter 2o and to keep the ship from plunging into the sun west is forced to activate the hyperdrive which saves the ship but throws it light years across the Galaxy into Uncharted space seven people and one robot are lost looking for the way back to Earth the set design in Lost in Space is impressive the interior of the spaceship is suitably futuristic looking while the earth-based scenes with their visually stunning backdrops recall last year's the Fifth Element most of the model sequences are equally Flawless but the computer generated spider like aliens have the same flaw exhibited by similar creatures and Starship Troopers They look fake on the whole however Lost in Space has a polished High budget appearance too bad some of the effects money wasn't spent on the script Lost in Space is infected with a Meandering story line and lifeless protagonist without a clear narrative drive there doesn't seem to be much of a point to the whole endeavor the desire to get home doesn't generate the level of urgency one might reasonably expect and the movie ends up feeling like a few episodes of Star Trek voyagers strung together there isn't a clear villain either since Dr Smith is more of an anti-hero than anything else's motivation is self-interest not malice in the TV series Smith as portrayed by Jonathan Harris was the stand out and Oldman does a superb job Reinventing the character bringing back many of Harris mannerisms while leaving his own indelible Mark Smith becomes a fascinating blend of Charisma and delicious nastiness Beyond Oldman however the cast is disappointingly Bland as John and Moren Robinson William Hurt and Mimi Rogers fizzle Heather Graham who is wonderful as roller girl in Boogie Nights fails to do anything interesting with Judy friends Matt LeBlanc displays no range whatsoever only the two children helium voiced Lacy chabbert and cool as a cucumber Jack Johnson show signs of having a pulse chabbert especially shows spunk but she has the least screen time of the major players incidentally it could be argued that it wouldn't have mattered if everyone in the cast had been in Peak acting form since the script delivers the kind of two-dimensional characters involved in Shallow relationships that even top-notch performances couldn't do much with Lost in Space features a few action sequences that generate adrenaline jolts but this is not an edge of the seat motion picture and to satisfy the the kitty crowd there's the likable robot and a friendly read cute alien called blop which is the product of Jim Henson's Creature Shop and seems designed to appeal to younger audience members this may add to the film's attraction in some quarters but not as far as I'm concerned I wanted a little more energy and a story that went somewhere as a result while I can offer a mild endorsement of Lost in Space as a comic book come to life it's too weak a film for me to stamp with an unqualified recommendation as a lover of Sci fiction I'm truly surprised this film didn't continue on with more sequels being based on the 196s hit TV series Lost in Space by Irwin Allen where everything was very colorful and dialogue was quite intelligent and witty to a more dark industrial look where the dialogue is filled with trivial onliners the movie had a lot to live up to but of course it always comes down to money and harsh critics had the gross income been higher there was plans for all assigned actors to be a part of a film Trilogy how Grand that would have been despite what the critics thought I thought it was funny and edgy but had the potential to be fantastic had the dialogue been scripted better think about it what's not to love about an intelligent family taking off in space with an enemy aboard ship and getting lost the stories would have been endless apparently in the TV show back in the day there was a lot of banter between the two Brilliant Minds of opposing forces Young Will Robinson and Dr Zachary Smith but there was not enough of this shown in the film unfortunately it would have delighted audiences with laughter appealing to every age directed by Steven Hopkins written by Akiva goldsman and produced by Mark W Steven Hopkins Akiva goldsman and Carla fry there were some cool actors in This film that I felt needed more recognition for one Gary Oldman as the villain Dr Zachary Smith who always brings characters to life secondly Lacy chaber as The Sassy theatrical teenager Penny Robinson and last but not least Matt leblan as the studly major Don West to be honest I never realized just how in shape Matt LeBlanc was at this point of his career until I'd seen this film on the hit TV show Friends where he played Joey tribon a man with much charm but not much brains you can see the resemblance between his two characters except major West is majorly rough around the edges and looks badass let me paint a picture for you the time is now 2058 and technology has advanced so far that humans are capable of traveling to distant Stars though no one has dared to travel to the Extremes in search of new live able planets that in until now professor John Robinson starring William Hurt along with his wife Professor Morin Robinson starring nenei Rogers decide to take their family along for a space cruise through the unknown but their mission is sabotaged by their physician Dr Smith Oldman who just so happens to be a spy as luck would have it Dr Smith became stranded on their ship leaving the crew with problematic situations at times while other times he was exactly the help they needed but they recruited the best pilot they could have asked for major West LeBlanc and a humorous mechanical robot who loves to say danger Will Robinson so while the whole premise of the movie is about finding hope amongst the stars in order to save Humanity since Earth is losing resources fast it ends up being about how will Robinson wants his father to realize how precious love is or how precious he is something to that extent whatever the case the movie is filled with both action and adventure through space and a joy to watch I enjoyed it though like I said before it lacked the potential to be something Grand my favorite parts were the penny Vision segments where Penny Robinson would poetically journalize her life into her watch I could clearly see the future Mean Girls gret and wieners before her time but in emo mode compared to John Robinson's hyper engine responsible for the ship's ability to jump through space or will Robinson's uncanny ability to form a friendship with a robot and recreate him or even the time machine that will Robinson kept going on about which surprisingly proved to be true eventually I still find her watch to be the coolest invention of all all I could think about was how much I wanted one during the film my other favorite parts were when the camera angles were shown through the inside of the ship from the perspective of the crew aboard and you felt like you were taking along for the ride I would love to see a 3D ride be made of Lost in Space how dope would that be almost would have the feel of the Back to the Future ride in Universal Studios but all space