PLANET SICK-BOY: http://www.sick-boy.com
Imagine countries from around the world, united together in building an expensive hunk of space crap to send people into a previously uncharted world to help save all of humanity. The voyage is quickly sabotaged and ultimately ruined by a maniacal crackpot. No, I'm not talking about Contact or even The Real World 9. This is the big screen version of the campy 60's television series, Lost in Space.
It all happens in the year 2058, a year which finds our planet on the verge of environmental ruin. There is no clean water to drink and fossil fuels are practically non-existent. Our only saving grace is in the distant planet, Alpha Prime, which has a similar climate and whatnot to Earth. The plan (called The Jupiter Project) is to blast the Robinson family off on a ten-year journey to Alpha Prime, where they will build a transport back to earth, thusly making future travel much quicker.
Sounds easy? It probably would have been if it weren't for the meddling Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman, The Fifth Element). He sneaks aboard the Robinson craft in an attempt to reprogram the ship's robot to destroy the mission. But, in the biggest example of intergalactic irony since Heston saw the Statue of Liberty at the end of Planet of the Apes, Smith ends up a stowaway aboard the now undermined vessel. Jesus, that almost sounded like a Dennis Miller line.
After the Earth family Robinson retreat to their sleep pods, the robot comes to life, destroys all navigational systems and a bunch of other very crucial things before it's stopped in one of the most harrowing robot-gone-out-of-control scenes since Robocop. It's too late to save the mission as the ship has been thrown way off course.
Of course, the Robinson family is too damn resourceful to give up that easily. They seemed too perfectly assembled, kind of like the cast of The A-Team. Each one is an expert in something, but I can't remember what they all were. Actually, my memory became rather hazy after I saw Judy Robinson (Heather Graham, Boogie Nights) in her gleefully tight spacesuit. (Editor's Note: If you would like to see more of the woman that PLANET SICK-BOY has named `The Most Beautiful American Actress - 1997', watch her eat up the screen in Two Girls and a Guy)
I do remember that there is a really cool scene where the ship goes into hyper-drive. And I remember being really pissed of about a CG monkey that they found on an abandoned craft. I also remember that the picture seemed about forty minutes too long, but I don't remember caring.
Writer Akiva Goldsman, occasionally a capable adapter of John Grisham books (The Client, A Time to Kill) but primarily the dunderhead who ruined the Batman franchise, has crafted a likeable story that's a bit long in the tooth, but doesn't frivolously waste valuable screen time (save the stupid monkey). Big kudos to Production Designer Norman Garwood (Brazil) for making one of the coolest spaceships ever.
Of the actors, TV's Joey (Matt LeBlanc, Friends) and Claudia (Lacey Chabert, Party of Five) stand out in the only roles that stray from the usual casting. There were also supposed to be a bunch of cameos from people who were in the original TV series, but I'm way too young to have ever seen it, so I don't know who they were.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews