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Reviews17
Thomas_Veil's rating
The wait continues for those who love those early episodes of "Lost in Space" from 1965 and want more.
First we watched the original series slowly degenerate into camp. Then we got the 1998 theatrical film which started promisingly and then, like the series, got silly. And now this pilot, in which the first half consists of whining characters we never really learn to care about, and the second half is a formulaic alien invasion story.
Where is the sense of wonder here that permeated the original series? Douglas Petrie's script, in attempt to add character depth to what many people consider a ridiculous show, just falls flat. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't send a family who can't get their you-know-what together on a major space mission. And John Woo's direction, especially in the action-packed second half of the show, proceeds at breakneck speed with no sense of pacing. Like too many films these days, it's fastfastfast and never pauses to take a breath.
The antagonists in this pilot were a particularly poor choice. Unlike Dr. Smith, who was interesting because you always wanted to know what was going on in that scheming mind of his, these villains have absolutely no sense of subtlety. When the show demands a crafty J. R. Ewing-type, we get instead marauding critters out of a 1950s horror film.
And did you notice -- so much of the focus in this pilot is on the kids! Gee, what went wrong with the original series? Oh yeah, that's right!
Kevin Burns, whose "Time Tunnel" pilot was much better but still resembled the original in little besides nomenclature, really needs to turn over the duties of reviving Irwin Allen TV series to someone who understands them better. "Lost in Space" could be a great show again, and it deserves better than this.
First we watched the original series slowly degenerate into camp. Then we got the 1998 theatrical film which started promisingly and then, like the series, got silly. And now this pilot, in which the first half consists of whining characters we never really learn to care about, and the second half is a formulaic alien invasion story.
Where is the sense of wonder here that permeated the original series? Douglas Petrie's script, in attempt to add character depth to what many people consider a ridiculous show, just falls flat. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't send a family who can't get their you-know-what together on a major space mission. And John Woo's direction, especially in the action-packed second half of the show, proceeds at breakneck speed with no sense of pacing. Like too many films these days, it's fastfastfast and never pauses to take a breath.
The antagonists in this pilot were a particularly poor choice. Unlike Dr. Smith, who was interesting because you always wanted to know what was going on in that scheming mind of his, these villains have absolutely no sense of subtlety. When the show demands a crafty J. R. Ewing-type, we get instead marauding critters out of a 1950s horror film.
And did you notice -- so much of the focus in this pilot is on the kids! Gee, what went wrong with the original series? Oh yeah, that's right!
Kevin Burns, whose "Time Tunnel" pilot was much better but still resembled the original in little besides nomenclature, really needs to turn over the duties of reviving Irwin Allen TV series to someone who understands them better. "Lost in Space" could be a great show again, and it deserves better than this.
Neither a great film nor as bad as its numerous critics say it is, Psycho (1998) will be recorded in film history as an interesting if not entirely successful experiment.
I can totally see what director Gus Van Sant was going for. So many remakes of beloved films draw complaints...and most of them are about how Hollywood screwed up what was a good story. In this film -- the only one of its kind, as far as I know -- Van Sant went for a literal remake...a shot-by-shot near-duplication of the original film.
Oh, there are a few differences. Now that filmmaking is less puritanical, we actually get to see poor Marion Crane with stab wounds, as well as Norman Bates masturbating as he watches her shower. These do modernize the film for the present day without getting grotesque or exploitative. (The scenes are handled with relative restraint and do not come anywhere near approaching the explicitness of any number of other modern movies.)
Still, bringing this film into the present day is a puzzling contradiction when much of the rest of the look of the film looks like it's set in the 1960s (opening graphics notwithstanding). Buildings look out-of-date. The dialog and camera movements seem quaint. Even the film's coloring looks like Kodak film stock from the 1960s.
Which is not a criticism, just a note that all this doesn't juxtapose well with the aforementioned shower and masturbating scenes...not to mention declaring outright that the movie takes place in 1998.
And of course one can argue with the casting -- that Anne Heche is no Janet Leigh, and that Vince Vaughn is certainly no match for Anthony Perkins. Heche is a puzzling choice. She may just have been coming out of the closet when this film was released; nevertheless she now seems an odd choice for the part of a woman carrying out a torrid love affair with a man in seedy hotels. Even her waif-like hair and figure only serve to enhance her contrast with the voluptuous, more traditionally beautiful Janet Leigh.
And Vince Vaughn loses on two counts. First, he's not particularly good in this. Perhaps no one could have adequately followed the boyish, delicate, twitchy Perkins, but Vaughn does little if anything to make this role his own. And second -- and this is certainly no fault of the director -- the kind of roles Vaughn has chosen to take since this one have pretty much eradicated any chance that viewers will take him seriously in this role.
For all its problems, however, this film does answer the question, "What if somebody tried to make a remake, a shot-for-shot remake, of a classic film, only in color and with a little judicious updating?" We now know the answer: you get mixed results.
I can totally see what director Gus Van Sant was going for. So many remakes of beloved films draw complaints...and most of them are about how Hollywood screwed up what was a good story. In this film -- the only one of its kind, as far as I know -- Van Sant went for a literal remake...a shot-by-shot near-duplication of the original film.
Oh, there are a few differences. Now that filmmaking is less puritanical, we actually get to see poor Marion Crane with stab wounds, as well as Norman Bates masturbating as he watches her shower. These do modernize the film for the present day without getting grotesque or exploitative. (The scenes are handled with relative restraint and do not come anywhere near approaching the explicitness of any number of other modern movies.)
Still, bringing this film into the present day is a puzzling contradiction when much of the rest of the look of the film looks like it's set in the 1960s (opening graphics notwithstanding). Buildings look out-of-date. The dialog and camera movements seem quaint. Even the film's coloring looks like Kodak film stock from the 1960s.
Which is not a criticism, just a note that all this doesn't juxtapose well with the aforementioned shower and masturbating scenes...not to mention declaring outright that the movie takes place in 1998.
And of course one can argue with the casting -- that Anne Heche is no Janet Leigh, and that Vince Vaughn is certainly no match for Anthony Perkins. Heche is a puzzling choice. She may just have been coming out of the closet when this film was released; nevertheless she now seems an odd choice for the part of a woman carrying out a torrid love affair with a man in seedy hotels. Even her waif-like hair and figure only serve to enhance her contrast with the voluptuous, more traditionally beautiful Janet Leigh.
And Vince Vaughn loses on two counts. First, he's not particularly good in this. Perhaps no one could have adequately followed the boyish, delicate, twitchy Perkins, but Vaughn does little if anything to make this role his own. And second -- and this is certainly no fault of the director -- the kind of roles Vaughn has chosen to take since this one have pretty much eradicated any chance that viewers will take him seriously in this role.
For all its problems, however, this film does answer the question, "What if somebody tried to make a remake, a shot-for-shot remake, of a classic film, only in color and with a little judicious updating?" We now know the answer: you get mixed results.
Hero origins in the Marvel universe are often hard enough to believe on their own. (Radioactive spiders are more likely to give you radioactive blood poisoning than super powers.)
The Hulk, being basically Mr. Hyde on super-steroids, is notoriously difficult to pull off convincingly. Lou Ferrigno, despite not being as brawny as the comic book character (and who is?), nevertheless did it well. The CGI character in this movie, not so much.
In fact, the CGI is the main killer for this movie. On its own, it's not convincing at all. There are almost no scenes in which you're not aware that you're looking at a video game character interacting with normal humans. The result is that the movie ends up looking like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" crossed with an X Box game.
Whoever designed the Hulk obviously never heard that less is more. A hulk larger than any living bodybuilder would have been fine, but this is one gigantic, over-detailed brute. If motion-tracking technology was used, it didn't show up in the final product. This Hulk moves awkwardly, at times much too fast considering his bulk. His skin is ridiculously over-detailed, as if the producers were afraid anything less would result in a plastic-y look. The result is that the Hulk looks like he's got the world's worst skin rash or something. Muscle striations are visible everywhere except the Hulk's eyeballs, and his overall size is just WAY overdone, like some homoerotic bodybuilder fantasy.
Poor CGI also afflicts things like helicopters and other vehicles, which is puzzling considering people have been doing these things for years now.
That leaves us with story, and unfortunately, the old "the army wants to turn me into a weapon" trope is getting really, really, really tired now. Some ingenuity might infuse fresh blood into this idea, but you won't find it here. The baddies are about as subtle as a fart in an elevator. One ends up wishing that the Cigarette Smoking Man from "The X Files" would show up to concoct some devious, shrewd plan to capture Bruce Banner. But no, we go full-out tanks-and-troops. And the less said about Blonsky, the better. It's all might and no brains. There are no surprises in this movie, only the assurance that you can see the next turn of the plot in this movie coming a mile away.
Norton does a serviceable job as Banner, but you can tell that even he knows that this is a paint-by-numbers plot. Overall it's just old, tired and overblown. Adam West's Batman reached the same level of camp, except that the producers of that show did it intentionally and with gusto.
The Hulk, being basically Mr. Hyde on super-steroids, is notoriously difficult to pull off convincingly. Lou Ferrigno, despite not being as brawny as the comic book character (and who is?), nevertheless did it well. The CGI character in this movie, not so much.
In fact, the CGI is the main killer for this movie. On its own, it's not convincing at all. There are almost no scenes in which you're not aware that you're looking at a video game character interacting with normal humans. The result is that the movie ends up looking like "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" crossed with an X Box game.
Whoever designed the Hulk obviously never heard that less is more. A hulk larger than any living bodybuilder would have been fine, but this is one gigantic, over-detailed brute. If motion-tracking technology was used, it didn't show up in the final product. This Hulk moves awkwardly, at times much too fast considering his bulk. His skin is ridiculously over-detailed, as if the producers were afraid anything less would result in a plastic-y look. The result is that the Hulk looks like he's got the world's worst skin rash or something. Muscle striations are visible everywhere except the Hulk's eyeballs, and his overall size is just WAY overdone, like some homoerotic bodybuilder fantasy.
Poor CGI also afflicts things like helicopters and other vehicles, which is puzzling considering people have been doing these things for years now.
That leaves us with story, and unfortunately, the old "the army wants to turn me into a weapon" trope is getting really, really, really tired now. Some ingenuity might infuse fresh blood into this idea, but you won't find it here. The baddies are about as subtle as a fart in an elevator. One ends up wishing that the Cigarette Smoking Man from "The X Files" would show up to concoct some devious, shrewd plan to capture Bruce Banner. But no, we go full-out tanks-and-troops. And the less said about Blonsky, the better. It's all might and no brains. There are no surprises in this movie, only the assurance that you can see the next turn of the plot in this movie coming a mile away.
Norton does a serviceable job as Banner, but you can tell that even he knows that this is a paint-by-numbers plot. Overall it's just old, tired and overblown. Adam West's Batman reached the same level of camp, except that the producers of that show did it intentionally and with gusto.