Lost In Space - 1998

 Welcome back, me.  I always give an excuse for being gone so long, even though no one cares, and here it is:  My girlfriend came for something like a month, and though we probably watched a few things that could've made the ol' blog here, I opted not to write.  Worse, I also didn't read any of the Sherlock Holmes book I am halfway through.  Ugh.

A while back I got a 4 film "Space" themed set that had 100% only real actual movies on it, big budget, recent, known.  Contact, Red Planet, Lost in Space here, and I don't remember the 4th.  This was also likely the first time I'd seen it since I saw it in theaters at the age of 12.  Ah, good times.

Matt LeBlanc, Gary Oldman, William Hurt, and Mimi Rogers head up an all star cast in this adaptation of the 60's television show I've never seen.  The movie and show were both about a family that is thrown into the depths of outer space with a man who has tried to kill them, and they have to deal with this threat as well as the threats that are in the space they're now exploring for the first time.

Lost In Space is a kids movie, in a lot of ways, and I was the demographic in mind.  That said, it really doesn't fail in that way.  Lots of focus on the kids in the movie, the giant friendly robot, and the stupid cgi monkey thing.   Mom and dad are sort of there, mostly dad of course, and the juvenile romance between sister Heather Graham and Matt LeBlanc is superficial and played for laughs.  It's got "dumb" stamped all over it's head in many, many ways.

Speaking of dumb, this movie is pretty dumb.  They encounter weird spider robots, which I remember from seeing it in the theater.  That part is decently done.  What isn't decently done is the speed up, slow down nature of the story movements.  

The biggest flaw though is the over 2 hour length, and some of this really should have been trimmed off. It's not a terrible movie, surprisingly, but it offensively long, and the writing is thin at best.  For a kids movie, though, what do you expect writing wise?  The length though, is shocking.  What the fuck kid in the 90's wanted a 2 hour movie?!