Gary Oldman really is lost in space. This amazingly gifted actor has apparently decided to stop reading scripts altogether before signing on to projects and in the process has put his loyal fans (including me) in a bind. How can we continue respecting a talented man when his creative output indicates that he does not seem to respect us?
Oldman's choices first started to worry me with his turn as an androgynous space psycho in last year's abysmal "The Fifth Element," and then came his surprisingly underwhelming performance as a terrorist scumbag in the inexplicably well-received "Air Force One."
Now he is on-screen as yet another big screen baddie, as Dr. Smith in the special effects-laden remake of the cheesy television series "Lost in Space," a film which is a sure bet to appear on critics' "Worst Of" lists at year's end. With this recent spate of roles in big-budget Hollywood affairs, it seems like Oldman is making an unfortunate (not to mention crass) attempt for mainstream approval.
As disheartening as Oldman's career choices have been of late, it must be said that he is just about the best thing in the new "Lost in Space," but that's not saying much. He delivers a performance that is essentially a trip through the Oldman Creepy Villains Archives, and he only gets away with it because the other actors and the story itself are so excruciatingly bad that there is little chance of him being outclassed.
In "Lost in Space," Oldman's role is essentially to complicate matters whenever he appears on-screen. Just what he is complicating is beyond me. There is so much talk of "hypo-systems" and "hydra-systems" and other words that begin with the letter "h" and include dashes that the filmmakers are obviously trying to divert viewers' attention away from the fact that there is no plot. Watching this film, I got the sneaking suspicion that the screenwriters used "Mad Libs" to write their dialogue, inserting nonsense techno-babble in all of the spaces that call for different parts of speech.
The story's excuse for a plot is as follows: It's the 21st century and Earth is in environmental danger. Scientist John Robinson (William Hurt) sets out to colonize the planet Alpha Prime with his wife (Mimi Rogers), son (Jack Johnson), two daughters (Lacey Chabert of "Party of Five" and Heather Graham) and space cowboy Don West (Matt LeBlanc of "Friends"), all of whom don hideous, anatomically correct space-gear. They stumble into all sorts of trouble -- giant spider attacks, time warps, you name any sci-fi plot staple and it's in there -- but they eventually save the day and grow closer as a family unit.
Unfortunately, the Robinsons are dysfunctional as hell, and the ending exceeds the limits of believability. Throughout the film, John pays no attention to his children, his wife is frustrated and underappreciated and the children's personalities are presented as being negatively shaped by years of coping with familial discontent. The Robinsons are one sorry lot, but conflicts are presented with the subtlety of a sledgehammer and resolved as if they never existed.
It's not too surprising that this film could care less about exploring the family dilemmas that it presents; it is a special effects-driven blockbuster wanna-be, after all. But the movie's "on to the next fancy-schmancy explosion scene!" mentality is even more obvious than it usually is in films of this genre. To make matters worse, it doesn't offer any visuals that haven't been seen in other atrocious big-budget flicks like "Batman and Robin" and "Spawn".
With all of these strikes against it, it is possible that good acting may have made this film more palatable. Alas, "Lost in Space" flunks out in that department, too. With the exception of Oldman and Graham (Rollergirl from "Boogie Nights") the actors' work is uniformly awful.
Hurt looks embarrassed to be in this picture, and he should be. LeBlanc, a limited actor but charming when he plays dopey, can handle the sarcastic one-liners that his part requires, but that's about it -- he is laughable as an action hero. Chabert, the most serious offender, is so precocious and cloying that I found myself wishing for her family to abandon her on one of the several dangerous planets that they crash onto and just leave her there.
In fact, by the film's end, you'll wish that whoever thought of making this movie did something similar: abandoned this lousy idea for a feature and sent it to "movie ideas that never saw the light of day" heaven. Maybe then they could have focused on something worthwhile, like finding a script for Oldman that is worth his considerable talents.
