Skip to main content

Lost In Space (2018) -- a review


I first caught Lost In Space while it ran in syndication back when I was a little spud. I loved the otherworldly adventures featuring a loving family who always had each other’s back regardless of what crazed situation they faced. As I got older, I realized that LIS wasn’t exactly Shakespeare (“The Great Vegetable Rebellion,” anyone?). Episodes that seemed like an engrossing adventure to an eight year old looked very silly when viewed by my older self. But despite the fact that LIS didn’t age well, it still held a warm place within my heart for all of these years.

The Lost In Space movie that was released twenty years ago was a misbegotten mess that tried to keep the camp while updating the overall concept with disastrous results. As if that wasn't bad enough, the same writer of that debacle became one of the executive producers on Star Trek: Discovery, promptly screwing up yet another one of my childhood favorites with terrible, clueless scripts. It made me extremely reluctant to watch the new Lost In Space series on Netflix. I just didn’t want to be disappointed yet again by a behind the scenes team that once more just didn’t get it.



But when I started watching the new LIS series, it quickly became clear that the new folks behind the scenes “got it”. A perfect example of this is the episode Infestation, when the Jupiter 2 finally breaks free of an ice trap and literally soars across the valley of an alien world. It’s a stunning, enthralling scene in and of itself--but then something even more amazing happened. While the J2 soared triumphantly through the skies, the original John Williams theme began to play. And in that moment, while chills ran through my body, I realized that this was no mere regurgitated, dead-on-arrival reboot like ST: Discovery. This was Lost In Space, gloriously reborn.

The new LIS wisely ditches the campy humor of the original series (and to be fair, the first season of the original LIS, in black and white, wasn’t as silly as its latter two seasons were) and strives to create a sincere space drama about a family--one of many--who are headed to a new world after earth is struck by a meteor. But after an attack by a mysterious force, their journey gets sidetracked, leaving them stranded on an unknown alien world. The Jupiter 2 is one of many smaller vessels that serves as a home away from home aboard the larger interstellar ship. The design of the new ship nicely mimics the saucer look of the original, with some creative upgrades.



The beloved Robot of the original also gets redone as a mysterious alien-made robot that meets up with young Will (very well played by Maxwell Jenkins) and becomes his friend/bodyguard--to the consternation of his family. This new re-imagining of the Robot is very well done; it manages to keep the Will/Robot dynamic of the original series while jettisoning the campier aspects of it. Another exceptional member of the cast is Molly Parker (Deadwood), whose presence in this gave me the glimmer of hope that I needed to start watching it, and she is marvelous as Maureen, the matriarch of the Robinson family. Toby Stevens is very good as John Robinson, a gruff warrior who is a sharp contrast to his scientist wife. And the Robinson girls are wonderfully fleshed out by Taylor Russell and Mina Sundwall as Judy and Penny, respectively. Russell is superb by making her Judy a traditionally brave doctor who doubts herself after a brush with death, and Sundwall shines as a wisecracking Penny, whose constant jokes hides her insecurity.



At first I had trouble warming up to Ignacio Serricchio as Don West. It wasn’t the actor’s fault; I just wasn’t initially keen on seeing Don as a hustler/smuggler who’s always looking for his next score. But Serricchio’s charm won me over. And Parker Posey, who takes over the traditionally male role of Dr. Smith, is very good. Before I started watching, I wasn’t sure if switching the gender of Smith would work, but Posey easily won me over. The effects and production design are flawless, giving the series a wondrous cinematic look that the 1998 movie didn’t even have. It was ironic that I was originally avoiding this new incarnation of Lost In Space, because now that I have seen it, I can’t wait for the second season. --SF



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Explorer From Another World

It’s Friday night during the summer in Beutter county, an idyllic farming community in Indiana, and the good folks are settling in for what should be another humdinger of an evening. Until their plans are shattered by the arrival of an Explorer From Another World! This turns out to be an alien (Gemma Sterling) who starts savagely killing people from the moment it disembarks from its flying saucer. Local kids Eddie (Colin McCorquodale), Marybeth (Sage Marchand) and Culpepper (Nolan Gay) are planning on seeing a movie, but it looks like they’ll be battling for the very survival of the human race instead! Explorer From Another World is a wonderfully done throwback to the B-movies of the 1950s and 1960s. Ably directed by Woody Edwards (who gives himself a small cameo as Hank in the sheriff’s jail cell), the film is forty five minutes long, but manages to tell its torrid but funny story very effectively in the time allotted. And the short running time tracks when you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Presence -- A Review

Presence, the latest film from director Steven Soderbergh ( Sex, Lies and Videotape, Out Of Sight ), is based on his real life experiences with what he believes is a ghost in his own home. Inspired by his spectral roommate, Soderbergh wrote a few pages of a script, which he handed to David Koepp ( Panic Room, Jurassic Park ), who finished it. The film was shot in a house in Crandall, New Jersey, over just eleven days in September 2023 (they received an interim SAG-AFTRA agreement during the strike that year). Soderbergh shot this in the ‘found footage’ style, using only one camera, with himself as the camera operator. The result is that Presence is a haunted house story that is told from the point of view of the ghost. And it’s marvelous. But instead of the typical ’found footage’ movie, which is supposed to be culled together from film or video that is literally found after the fact, we see everything that’s happening in this house through the ‘eye...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cleaner -- a review

In Cleaner Daisy Ridley ( Star Wars: The Force Awakens ) stars as Joanna “Joey” Locke, a window cleaner at a swanky London office building that serves as the headquarters for an energy company. Joey becomes late for work when she’s forced to take her autistic brother Michael (Matthew Tuck) to her job with her. Because of her lateness, her nimrod of a manager makes Joey work an hour late, well into the evening. Joey reluctantly keeps cleaning windows of bird splatter in the darkness, but eventually bird droppings wind up being the least of her problems. A team of terrorists arrive at a party that’s being held at the office for the energy company’s share holders. Disguised as performers, the terrorists seize the energy company’s board members as hostages, while knocking everybody else out with gas. Joey, still working on the windows outside, sees all of this and promptly goes into action. Because, as the film has earlier established, Joey is a former Britis...
Post a Comment
Read more