By Michael Lyons
Innerspace should have been a blockbuster. Produced by Steven Spielberg and directed by Joe (Gremlins) Dante, the film was high-concept, combining science fiction and comedy, starring one of film's most likable actors and a loveable comedian who was starting to dabble in movies.
Additionally, it was released at the height of the summer movie season, it felt like a summer-escapist movie, and it was the '80s, the golden age of summer movies. But, opening on July 1, 1987, just in time for the big Independence Day weekend, Innerspace came in at number three, behind the comic adaptation of the classic TV series Dragnet, the Stanley Kubrick Vietnam War drama Full Metal Jacket and just ahead of a re-issue of Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
There have been a lot of "Monday morning quarterbacks" reviewing what happened to Innerspace. Some felt that the marketing for the film just didn't do it justice. Trailers and commercials sold the film as a wacky, slapstick comedy, and posters positioned it more as a wondrous fantasy (a picture of a thumb and forefinger, with a miniature vehicle and tiny person, and the tag line: "An Adventure of Incredible Proportions").
Others felt that the script was somewhat "all over the place," with moments of wild comedy, comic-book-like villains, and an unnecessarily heavy plot.
The story of Innerspace seems pretty straightforward: a test pilot named Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) agrees to participate in an experiment where he and a spaceship-like vessel are to be miniaturized and injected into a rabbit to see what future applications this could have for doctors and medicine.
Of course, all goes wrong, and, instead, Tuck is accidentally injected into the body of an anxious, hypochondriacal grocery store employee, Jack Putter (Martin Short). As they are quite literally stuck with each other, the two must find a way to get Tuck out of Jack before the film's villains, looking to steal the new technology, get to them.
Innerspace has enough creativity to fill several movies. Although not on screen together for most of the film, Quaid and Short have great chemistry, which helps create a strong bond between the two disparate characters.
Also, a highlight is the Oscar-winning special effects of Innerspace. Bringing everything from the bloodstream to stomach acid to the heart to larger-than-life must not have been easy in the era of practical effects. How this film did it is still a wonder to behold.
The supporting cast includes Meg Ryan as Tuck's love interest, Lydia, who adds sweetness and a romantic "love triangle" of sorts to the proceedings, and character actors Kevin McCarthy, Fiona Lewis, Robert Picardo, and Vernon Wells make for perfect, over-the-top villains.
It all comes together in a movie that's as enjoyable as movies get, and it's a shame that Innerspace was somewhat dismissed when it was released. Anniversaries of films always help to right old wrongs like this, and, as this summer marks thirty-five years since the release of Innerspace, it's the perfect time to, once again, go on the "fantastic voyage" this movie provides.
When it was released on Blu-Ray in 2015, director Joe Dante, like so many, looked back fondly on his film when talking with the website Cinema Retro, saying that Innerspace was "probably the movie that I had made up to then that was the closest to my intention. As a result, I was very happy with it. When I look at it today, I still think it's a tremendous amount of fun."
Sources: cinemaretro.com
My book Drawn to Greatness: Disney's Animation Renaissance is now available on Amazon!
Visit my website Words From Lyons for more of my articles and podcasts.
No comments:
Post a Comment