BLAST FROM THE PAST A film review by Steve Rhodes Copyright 1999 Steve Rhodes RATING (0 TO ****): ***
It was during the movie's hilarious and frenzied big dance number that I came to the full realization that I had grown to love BLAST FROM THE PAST, a movie that starts off as slow as molasses. The movie is a delightful romantic comedy starring Brendan Fraser, a gifted actor from movies as widely varied as GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE and GODS AND MONSTERS, and Alicia Silverstone, a talented actress whose only notable success was in CLUELESS. As directed by THE FIRST WIVES CLUB's Hugh Wilson and written by Bill Kelly, BLAST FROM THE PAST manages to use low-key, subtle humor to come up with big laughs, no small feat.
We meet the Webbers 35 years ago at a party at their Ozzie-and-Harriet style house during the height of the Cuban missile crisis. A very pregnant Helen Webber busies herself in the kitchen while her husband, Calvin, plies the guests with bad jokes and cocktails. Calvin is an avowed anti-Communist with a tidy net worth, thanks to his many inventions. He has plowed his investments into creating a copy of his house in his backyard bomb shelter and has his own Costco-sized supply store within it.
Looking like a wild-eyed idiot, Christopher Walken, as Calvin, takes the only broadly comedic approach of the leads and is the least successful because of it. Stealing all of her scenes with him is Sissy Spacek as his mousy wife, Helen. Ever-obedient Helen, protests in private with screams in locked rooms and the ingestion of lots of cooking sherry and other inebriates.
The party's plastic festivities are interrupted when a presidential address comes on television. A gleeful Calvin booms, "Kennedy is going toe to toe with Khrushchev now on television." Calvin's jubilant mood turns somber, however, when Kennedy informs the nation that the Russian missiles are pointed at us and "are capable of striking most cities in the Western Hemisphere." After that, Calvin sends the guests home and takes his wife down into the bomb shelter. Thinking, by mistake, that the big one had struck their LA home, Calvin sets the locks on the shelter to 35 years -- the half-life of nuclear radiation.
It is with the growth of their son Adam (Brendan Fraser) into an adult that the movie finally gets its legs. Adult is completely the wrong term, however. The strength of Fraser's performance is that he plays Adam as a 35-year-old "boy," a lumbering and lovable hunk of a boy, who knows his geography and Latin but has never had to mature. With his impeccable manners, he is every girl's parent's dream date.
The time approaches for them to venture above ground to survey the damage and see if the area is habitable - their old neighborhood is now LA at its worst, very uninhabitable. Helen asks her son if he has been thinking about meeting a girl. "I've been thinking about that a little, just the last 15 years," he smiles in reply.
His mom, as mom's do, gives Adam a laundry list of do's and don'ts after he has to go alone on the first trip to the wasteland above. One of these instructions is to look for a Holiday Inn to spend the night. Typical of the delicious subtly of the script is his reaction to the fancy touch-tone, room phone. The bellboy explains that he just needs to dial 9 to get out. "Get out of what?" Adam asks. "The hotel," the nonplussed bellboy says as he stares in disbelief.
After Adam meets a cute and sassy young woman named Eve Rustikov (Alicia Silverstone), he enlists her help in procuring enough supplies for another decade or so. He also asks her assistance in finding a non-mutant woman from Pasadena so he can get married. Eve takes Adam under her wing like a big sister might take care of her mentally deficient little brother. With their marvelous chemistry together, the two begin to fall for each other without either of them admitting it. Both actors give sweet and compelling performances, but Fraser dominates the movie with his striking comedic grace. In a wonderful supporting role, Dave Foley, from A BUG'S LIFE, plays Troy, a gay man who is Eve's best friend. He provides the glue that makes many of the scenes between the leads work.
The movie hits its comedic zenith in the scene in which Eve and Troy go in search of the entrance to the bomb shelter. It is the reaction shots of those around them that will have you doubling over in laughter. The mark of a good comedy is whether you like to see it again. A couple more times would be just fine with me.
BLAST FROM THE PAST runs 1:46. It is rated PG-13 for brief profanity and sexuality and would be appropriate for kids around 11 and up.
Email: Steve.Rhodes@InternetReviews.com Web: www.InternetReviews.com
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