Have you ever fallen asleep without realizing it? Have you ever drifted off into such a deep, satisfying sleep that you weren’t even aware of being asleep until you woke up? That happened to me twice while watching Lost In Space, the dreadful reboot of the popular 1960s SF TV show. I wound up watching the film over two nights in an effort to just stay awake until the credits. This wasn’t the first time I had seen LIS. I first saw it when it came out in the theater with some friends and fellow fans of the original TV show. The 1960s series, produced by the legendary Irwin Allen, started out as a serious SF thriller during its black and white premiere season (which remains a favorite of many die-hard fans) only to devolve into a silly, campy cartoon in its third and final season.
The LIS remake tries to shoehorn the original premise, that of a young family
going into outer space, into a "modern" SF film, complete with all the angst and
shallow drama they can stuff into the concept. And, unlike the original series,
the movie has the latest (by 1998 standards) in CGI effects, which makes it
visually stunning. However, despite all of the impressive eye candy that’s on
display, the new LIS is about as fun as watching paint dry. And in spite of a
good cast of actors, led by William Hurt as John Robinson, the family patriarch,
the performances are flat and lifeless. Hurt and Mimi Rodgers, who plays big mama
Maureen, are clearly sleepwalking through their scenes--and the two girls,
Heather Graham as Judy and Lacey Chabert as Penny, are both as bland as vanilla.
The only decent performances come from young Jack Johnson, who plays a vitalized Will Robertson, and Gary Oldman, whose Dr. Smith is more darker, and far more menacing, than the vaudeville-soaked, comic foil that Jonathan Harris’ Smith had become in the series. But the fact that Oldman still manages to pull off such a vibrant performance from the lame script shows what a great actor he truly is. I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on the rest of the cast, considering the stale and cliché-ridden dialogue they have to recite here. The production design also looks way out of touch; the now-classic design of functionality from the original series is dumped in favor of a spaceship that looks like a bumpy lima bean.
I liked the fact that the surviving original LIS cast members all had bit parts in this film (with Mark Goddard, the original Major West, shining brightly here as a general). But maybe trying to update Irwin Allen’s original idea of a Swiss Family Robinson who’re lost in space was just asking too much to begin with. Or maybe the new behind the scenes team just weren’t up to the task of revitalizing the story for a new generation. I recall that I hated this movie when I first saw it back in 1998. Now, some twelve years later, I figured that I would revisit it just to see if my feelings were the same. But then it wound up putting me into a deep, satisfying sleep. Which leaves me with the one nice thing I could say about the Lost In Space reboot: it’s pretty effective as a cure for insomnia.
--SF
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