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Dom Robinson reviews
Entertainment In Video
- Cat.no: EDV 9013
- Cert: PG
- Running time: 125 minutes
- Year: 1998
- Pressing: 1999
- Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 24 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Widescreen: 2.35:1 (Panavision)
- 16:9-enhanced: Yes
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras : Scene index, Crew info, 2 Music Videos, Deleted Scenes, US and International Theatrical Trailers, Special Effects, Production Design Stills
Director:
- Stephen Hopkins
(Blown Away, Dangerous Game, The Ghost and the Darkness, Judgment Night, Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child, Predator 2)
Producers:
- Mark W. Koch, Stephen Hopkins, Akiva Goldsman and Carla Fry
Screenplay:
- Akiva Goldsman
(Batman and Robin, Batman Forever, The Client, Silent Fall, A Time To Kill)
Music:
- Bruce Broughton
Cast:
- Dr Smith: Gary Oldman (Air Force One, Basquiat, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Criminal Law, The Fifth Element, The Firm, Immortal Beloved, JFK, Leon, Meantime, Murder in the First, Prick Up Your Ears, Quest For Camelot, Romeo is Bleeding, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Scarlet Letter, Sid and Nancy, State of Grace, Track 29, True Romance, Director: Nil By Mouth)
Dr John Robinson: William Hurt (The Accidental Tourist, Alice, Altered States, The Big Chill, Body Heat, Broadcast News, Children of a Lesser God, Dark City, The Doctor, Gorky Park, I Love You To Death, Jane Eyre (1996), Kiss of the Spider Woman, Michael, Mr Wonderful, One True Thing, Second Best, Smoke, Trial By Jury, Until the End of the World, TV: A Midsummer Night’s Dream)
Major Don West: Matt Le Blanc (Ed, Lookin’ Italian, TV: Friends)
Dr Maureen Robinson: Mimi Rogers (Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, Desperate Hours, The Doors, Gung Ho, The Mighty Quinn, The Mirror Has Two Faces, Monkey Trouble, The Player, The Rapture, Someone To Watch Over Me, Trees Lounge, White Sands (uncredited), TV: Dream On)
Dr Judy Robinson: Heather Graham (The Ballad of Little Jo, Boogie Nights, Drugstore Cowboy, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, I Love You To Death, License To Drive, Midnight Sting, Mrs Parker and the Vicious Circle, Scream 2, Shout, Six Degrees of Separation, Swingers, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Twins (uncredited), Two Girls and a Guy, TV: Twin Peaks)
Penny Robinson: Lacey Chabert (Anastasia, Lion King II: Simba’s Pride, TV: All My Children, Party of Five)
Will Robinson: Jack Johnson (Love Affair, The Tie That Binds)
Maureen from Driving School failed her first outer-space driving test.
Lost In Space is the big-screen outing for the classic 1965 TV series updating the story for the world 33 years later. In the 1990’s version, it is the year 2058 and Earth has only twenty years left before all the fossil fuels are exhausted so the battle is on to colonise the human race on the nearest habitable planet, Alpha Prime. All the warring factions have put aside their differences (so, Prime Minister, don’t worry too much about your daft ‘Good Friday’ peace agreement) and are committed to building a “hypergate” which teleports man and machine from Earth’s orbit to that of the new planet.
The crew has been chosen. Led by the son of one of the Academy’s best members, Dr John Robinson (William Hurt) will lead his dysfunctional family into space, that being made up of wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers), daughters Judy (Heather Graham) and Penny (Lacey Chabert) and son Will (Jack Johnson). Expert fighter Major Don West (Friends star Matt Le Blanc) is on hand to guide the Jupiter spacecraft on its ten-year mission to victory by putting the family into a cryogenic sleep while they reach Alpha Prime.
All fine and dandy then and absolutely nothing can go wrong. That is until Dr. Smith (Gary Oldman playing it camp) sabotages the mission by planting a killer robot on board, but doesn’t account for staying on for the ride, much to the disapproval (to put it politely) of the others when they are woken up only hours from blast off.
What follows is the Robinsons’ attempts to keep Smith at bay so he does no more harm, while trying to find a way out of this mess he’s put them in. Will they succeed and find a route home? You should know that question if you saw the original TV series and/or have an inkling that the studio will want to get a bit of mileage out of some sequels…
At the time this film was created, it was stating as breaking the record for the total number of special effects for a film, with a count approaching 750 and it’s clear that they took pole position over the acting ability of the cast. The differences of the world leaders may have been put to rest, but man still fights against woman when there’s household chores to be done.
William and Mimi bicker like a couple on the brink of divorce, Jack Johnson is rather a know-it-all kid, Lacey Chabert whines cutely and frequently and Heather Graham doesn’t look quite as good as she did in Boogie Nights, but… the best scenes come when the remaining two major cast members work together.
Gary Oldman, as the manic Dr. Smith, is always worth a watch even when the script isn’t all it could be as was proved in The Fifth Element, while Matt Le Blanc proves he could find a niche as a wise-cracking action hero when the time comes for the cast of Friends to grow up and get their own apartments. Finally, there’s a cameo from Edward Fox as the ‘business man’ who instructs Oldman to sabotage the Jupiter ship.
William Hurt realised too late that the ship belonged to heavy metal group Disaster Area
The picture quality is first-rate for all but a handful of seconds between 54 and 55 minutes into the film when some grain is evident onscreen. I understand this features on the Region 1 release as well so must be a fault of the original master and given that the miniscule amount of time that it appears last shorter than the time it took me to write this sentence, it’s not a reason for avoiding this DVD.
At all other times, the picture on this dual-layer disc is astounding with bright, sharp colours and a fantastic anamorphic pressing which works wonders with a widescreen TV as it’s free of artifacts. The average bitrate is a fine 5.1Mb/s, occasionally peaking over 7Mb/s. The film is presented in its original widescreen ratio of 2.35:1 (not “16:9” as quoted on the back cover, which seems to hint that their DVD releases are anamorphic – rather than the actual ratio – but it doesn’t apply for the 1.66:1 Much Ado About Nothing) and the anamorphic picture brings with it an extra 33% of resolution for those with widescreen televisions.
Thankfully, the anamorphic problem of giving people ‘fat faces’, as seen in Wag The Dog and Boogie Nights has now been cured and the geometry is correct.
The sound quality is brilliant with speakers exploding all around the room as the shots are fired, spaceships take off or get blown up and creatures called Blarp go “Blarp !”. This is one of the few EiV titles to get a Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack – why can’t they ALL be encoded this way ?
Seeing space outside made Gary Oldman realise not all was well with his escape plan.
Extras :
Chapters and Trailer : 24 chapters cover the major scenes in the film that the box claims lasts 130 minutes, although it’s closer to 125. A few more wouldn’t have gone amiss, but the booklet containing the chapter titles looks to have had a slight mishap in the printing as the first few pages have been cut off at the wrong point, resulting in some of The Mask‘s title coming through.
Two trailers adorn this release. The back cover states they are the US and International one, but the DVD states “teaser” and “theatrical” options, the first being in an anamorphic 16:9 ratio and the second being non-anamorphic.
Languages & Subtitles :
Just one language, but the good news is that it is in English and in Dolby Digital 5.1. Subtitles are also included in the same language.
Other extras :
- Biographies & Filmographies: The information for each of the principal actors, as well as screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and director Stephen Hopkins scrolls upwards, but it seems impossible to select a name individually. You have to take them in the order it gives you. I find it hard to swallow that Lacey Chabert appeared on All My Children in 1970 when she was only 15 at the time this film was released…
- Special Effects: A 16-minute documentary showing how certain scenes were created. I always find it interesting to see the build-up of the SFX.
- Deleted scenes: 9 deleted scenes which didn’t make it to the final theatrical version spread over 12 minutes, but each accessible in their own right.
- Music videos: Two are included here: Apollo 440‘s brilliant techno reworking of the Lost in Space theme tune, as heard over the end credits and Crystal Method‘s Busy Child, the latter being missed off the American release.
- Director’s Commentary: Not stated on the back of the box, but this one holds the musings of Messrs Goldsman and Hopkins, so it’s not a director-only commentary track.
What’s missing ? : While there’s plenty of extras on this DVD, there’s still a few more that could have topped them off.
- A second feature-length commentary track, this time from visual effects supervisor Angus Bickerton and other special effects team members, director of photography Peter Levy, editor Ray Lovejoy and a producer.
- A featurette entitled “The Future of Space Travel”.
- “The Television Years” featuring synopses of all original episodes from “Lost in Space” and interviews with original cast members.
- Production designs, despite what the back cover states.
Menu :
The main menu is one of the best yet for the UK DVD market. After the dull copyright logo, the screen goes black and the new Lost in Space logo swings into view. The main and sub-menus are also animated – most of them containing sound too – and with a look the same as the control panels on the Jupiter 2.
On inserting the disc, you see the copyright info, the Entertainment In Video logo and then the spinning LS logo leading to an anamorphic main menu. Clicking on “Start” brings up the New Line Cinema logo again before the film starts.
Matt Le Blanc felt sure to win the Spawn lookalike contest. Lost in Space on DVD, like The Mask, is a product scoring close-to-full marks in most technical sections, but for this film it could have been improved by shortening certain scenes (it seems to take a fair while before the Jupiter 1 takes off, for example, as well as later scenes which run too long) and stopping Heather Graham from looking too pasty-faced.
Overall, if you have a Region 2-only machine it’s a worthy purchase but, again, the American disc still wins hands down if you’re not fussed about losing a Crystal Method promo. It would be nice if someone in the quality control department took a bit of time to get the box info right though. FILM : *** PICTURE QUALITY : ****½ SOUND QUALITY: ***** EXTRAS: **** ——————————- OVERALL: ****
Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 1999.
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.