Blast From the Past

Blast From the Past

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DVD details

• Actors: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone.
• Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Full Screen, Widescreen, NTSC.
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), English (Dolby Digital 5.1). Subtitles: English.
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only).
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Rated PG-13.

DVD Reviews of Blast From the Past

DVD Review: Works as romantic comedy
Summary: 3 Stars

The movie starts in 1962 and it quickly points out humorously that this was a very strange time. America had never been more affluent. New inventions were making life easier and easier. Life was good. Yet paranoia over our Communist enemies was never higher. Beneath the laughter and the good times lay a sense of impending atomic doom. Fallout shelters were all the rage.

We meet Calvin and Helen Webber [Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek], a popular Los Angeles couple. Calvin, who is a scientist, is particularly afraid of the Communist menace. He has somehow secretly constructed an underground shelter the size of a super Wal-Mart. One night a news broadcast convinces him that nuclear war may be at hand. He drags his thoroughly confused and very pregnant wife into the shelter. Moments later an out of control US fighter jet happens to crash and burn on top of their house. The explosion prompts Calvin to lock the shelter down. The couple is trapped there for over two decades.

Some of the best parts of Blast From the Past show Calvin and Helen, along with Adam, the son she bears, passing the years underground. Adam [Brendan Fraser] grows up to be a strapping, well educated and polite young man. Naturally he gives new meaning to the term sheltered!

Meanwhile, life goes on apace above their heads. The old neighborhood goes downhill. This transition is neatly portrayed by the evolution of a family business, which starts out as a soda shop and ends up a dive bar.

When the locks finally open the shelter, Calvin ventures up. It takes about five minutes for him to decided that the world is now a place inhabited by mutants. The experience causes him to collapse and take to his bed. Adam must then go up and replenish their supplies.

It is here that the movie could be a lot better. The idea of a man who has been frozen in time and then sets off into the present world has all sorts of comic possibilities. Blast Form the Past does not explore much of this. Instead, it concentrates on Adam's search for a wife, aided by the delightful and talented Alicia Silverstone, whose character is named [you guessed it] Eve. She is naturally distrustful of him because she thinks he is mad. His saying only that he is from out of town doesn't help.

My main problem here is that Adam, who has never seen any human beings other than his nutty parents, is too quick to adapt to present day Los Angeles. He is the perfect gentleman, raised in a much more repressed culture, yet he seems unaffected by Eve's revealing attire or by her penchant for cursing like a sailor. In their search for a wife, she takes him to a disco, where it turns out he's a fabulous dance. It's good to know that Brendan Fraser is so talented in this department, but it doesn't seem like something Adam could do.

What saves the movie is the affecting romance that develops between Adam and Eve. While it's obvious that this is going to occur, it is still a sweet and wholly innocent situation. While the film does not go in a more innovative direction, which would have made it a more satisfying experience, a la The Truman Show, it does wind up be a charming romantic comedy.

Description of Blast From the Past