(Review originally written at 15 April 2006)
This remake of the successful '60's television show really is a waste of some good potential. It by no means is an horrible movie but the script isn't really interesting or spectacular and the character treatment is quite poor.
In a way this movie is a mixed bag. On the one hand it has some good actors in it and some of the special effects are really good but than again on the other hand the story is pretty shallow, the costumes are embarrassingly dreadful and some of the special effects are below average at best. Sounds weird, a movie that has both good and bad special effects in it. It's a bit weird, it's like they spend most of the time on the big special effects shots and after that they raffled the rest of the special effects. At times the movie is impressive to watch and at other moments it's just laughable bad to look at. Such as the CG character Blarp. He (or she?) looked absolutely dreadful and it made the movie even more ridiculous and bad to watch. But perhaps worst thing about the entire character is that it's a totally, completely unnecessary one that doesn't add anything to the story at all.
The movie has a solid cast. John Hurt certainly adds some believability to the silly moments in the movie and he deliverers some of the bad dialog good and even credible. Gary Oldman is of course also a great actor but he plays a bit of an uninteresting villain in this movie that doesn't get enough opportunity to shine. Matt LeBlanc is most of the time convincing in his role but he at times deliver some cheesy dialog which doesn't always make him believable as a tough space pilot. Mimi Rogers and Heather Graham also walk around in the movie but they get very little interesting to do. Good in her role was also Lacey Chabert. She's a good young actress, never really understood why she didn't appeared in more mainstream big Hollywood productions. She's an actress with great potential but somehow Hollywood never really picked this up. Maybe it has something to do with the failure of this movie?
Because yes, this movie is a bit of a failure. Not only in terms of how well it did at the box office and how well it was received by the crowd and critics but also certainly in terms of how the movie is constructed. The script is just disappointingly shallow and has some totally unlikely and unbelievable events in it, that at times don't even make sense. The story also uses too many elements from the first Star Wars trilogy and even a little bit from "2001: A Space Odyssey". It doesn't only uses story elements from that movies, it also rips off the looks of some of the spaceships, planets and city skylights. No, "Lost in Space" certainly isn't the most original science-fiction movie ever made.
The movie also lacks some good tension and action sequences. There are too many slow moments in the movie in which totally nothing happens. It's OK to have some slower moments in a movie but only when the script and characters are good and interesting enough to carry those slower moments. In this movie that really isn't the case.
This movie is not a complete disaster and the 4.6 rating here at the moment might be a bit too harsh. The movie does provide some good and entertaining moments. But if only the movie had a better and more original script, than this movie perhaps would had been a bigger success and certainly a better one to watch.
5/10
Watch trailer
No comments: