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Editorial
Amazon.co.uk Review
Packed with more than 750 dazzling visual effects, this US$70 million adventure does more (and less) than give the 1965-68 TV series a state-of-the-art face-lift. Aimed at an audience that wasn't born when the series originally aired, the sci-fi extravaganza doesn't even require familiarity, despite cameo appearances by several of the TV show's original cast members. Instead, Lost in Space is a high-tech hybrid of the original premise with enough sensory overload to qualify as a spectacular big-screen video game, supported by a time-travel premise that's adequately clever but hardly original. It's certainly never boring, and visually it's an occasionally awesome demonstration of special effects technology. But, in its attempt to be all things to all demographics, the movie's more of a marketing ploy than a satisfying adventure, thankfully dispensing with the TV show's cheesy camp but otherwise squandering a promising cast in favour of eye-candy and ephemeral storytelling. --Jeff Shannon
amazing
Review date: 2006-08-03 Rating: 10 out of 10
I stumbled on this movie quite "accidentally" on TV, zapping around, and I was transfixed. I had not heard of this movie before and I wonder how, it is breathtaking. Point taken from other reviewers who speak of cliches, poor characters etc, but I actually see this as a strong point. The characters seem quite rigid in some sort of stereotype, and this makes this movie quite orginal I think. Anyway, I had a great time, the action is just non stop, new things happen all the time, it is an amazing rollercoaster ride in space. The special effects are indeed incredible, everybody will have to agree on that.
Anyway: a movie to have a great time, but probably not worth watching more than once.
The story is one cliché after another, from the disfunctional family and generation gap conflict, to time travel and bugs. Since I don't like bugs, I would have pushed this to 4 stars, but since they are a big part, it goes down to 3. The time travel part has some interesting twists that may put it on 4 stars, but as a whole it goes down to 3. The characters are cliché'd and two-dimensional, failing to entice any other emotion than boredom (again, Gary Oldman managing to save it).
Anyway, special effects can never save a movie if the story or characters don't hold up. It could have been done better, of course, but as is, it's just another sci-fi action movie with plenty of eye-candy.