Lost in Space 1998, Rated PG-13 New Line Home Video

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Starring William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Matt LeBlanc. Released to DVD on October 6, 1998.

Based off the fifties, cult classic, TV series of the same name, Lost in Space is the story of the Robinson family, your run-of-the-mill twenty-first century family: their eldest daughter has a doctorate and their eight year old son can build a functional robot out of a milk carton and a shoelace. The Robinsons have volunteered to be cryogenically frozen and flown to the planet Alpha Prime, where they will be unfrozen and will begin to colonize the previously uninhabited planet. All is going according to plan, until the nefarious Dr. Smith, played with a lip smacking evilness by Gary Oldman, programs an on-board robot to destroy the Robinsons and their ship. The robot destroys most of the ships unnecessary accouterments like the communications system and the cappuccino maker before the Robinsons are able to regain control. However, because of the damage caused by the robot, the Robinsons are forced to fly through the sun at hyperspeed to escape being burned alive. This jump into hyperspeed saves the lives of the Robinsons and the other people on board the ship, but has also sent them to an unknown galaxy that is not charted on any maps. And thus, they are lost in space.

Before screening Lost in Space, I was quite hesitant about viewing it. I just wasn't sure that Hollywood needed yet another silver screen adaptation of an old TV show, especially with the debacles of The Beverly Hill Billies, McHale's Navy, and Leave it to Beaver weighing prominently in my mind. Lost in Space's theatrical release date, in early April, also scared me; this was just before the summer blockbuster rush began, and just after the dramatic, winter, Oscar release period ended, signifying to me that this movie fit in neither of the aforementioned categories of films. However, in the end, these fears were rather unjustified. Like Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin's Godzilla, Lost in Space was a film with special effects that were beyond being amazing, with a screenplay that I couldn't in good faith even call poor; if you open a window right now, I'm sure you'll still be able to smell the putrid odor of Godzilla's script wafting your way like a bad sewer gas, but I digress.

There was a time during the early '90's, where I could watch a movie deemed a 'special effects extravaganza' and actually be able to figure out how the filmmakers created the special effects I saw on screen. Usually this process occurred when I recognized a blue screen or a matte painting. However, this ended with Independence Day's arrival in theaters in 1995. No matter how many times I tried to spot models, blue screens, or fuzzy edges around the computer generated imaging (CGI), I just couldn't. This was precisely the case with Lost in Space.

It is quite obvious that director Stephen Hopkins spent a lot of time and money creating Lost in Space's action sequences and special effects. The first 90 minutes of this film rocketed passed before me, with the eye candy like CGI never slowing to the point where I began to question the presence of certain elements in Akiva Goldman's script like the cute alien who appears to have been specifically designed to sell stuffed animals and the lack of continuity in the results the spaceships computers generate.

The ending, involving William Hurt's attempts to save his family, definitely crossed the line from emotional to sappy, but this is made bearable by the humorous references the characters make to the fact that it is mushy time.

The sets are rather obvious and I'm sure a sixth grader could have written a more cohesive and conflict solving screenplay, but these are minor points to the jaw-dropping special effects used in Lost in Space. This was just a whole lot of fun to watch.