1987 was a very good year. MTV was rocking, with good music like The Talking Heads' "Once In A Lifetime", Star Trek The Next Generation premiered, and it was a a darn good year in film. One of those was a little somewhat overlooked film, a little Spielberg produced, Joe (Gremlins) Dante directed opus called Innerspace. It was classic Spielbergian wonder, with not only it's own sense of whimsy and fun, likeable characters, but it also shouted out to Fantastic Voyage, from 1966. Using the idea of shrinking people and a submersible down to microscopic size and shooting them into a living person, this voyage saw Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid), a test pilot for the US Navy, a somewhat down and out individual (acknowledged as a talented pilot, but a washout for the fast track because of an iconoclastic nature). His girlfriend, Lydia Maxwell (Meg Ryan) has just walked out on him. His new assignment is as a submersible pilot for a contracting concern developing a miniaturization technology that allows him to be reduced in size and injected into another organism. Tuck's intended subject for the test flight is a rabbit. But due to some corporate espionage shenanigans, he ends up in Jack Putter (Martin Short) an assistant grocery store manager and a poor guy who has trouble relaxing. Trying to go on vacation, he finds himself joined at the blood vessels with Tuck's predicament and the two of them must team up to deal with the situation, before the rival organization's operatives find the two, or before Tuck's air supply runs out.
This movie is classic Spielberg backed from the 80s, charming and fun, breezy in it's pacing, just the tiniest bit of speculative, but mostly about it's lovable characters just hanging on for a ride and finding out that they are becoming more who they really are, being around each other and going on this adventure.
It also has a bit of wonder about technology. The big bad of the film calls space a "dead end" as well as other avenues, but describes miniaturization as the future. Space is hardly a dead end. Though he is right, in that "miniaturization", though cybernetic, rather than biological, seems to be one of the big trends.
Innerspace. Its fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment