Lost in Space

Rating: 1/10 (8 October 2013)

The big "spoiler" is that this is a big budget Hollywood move with a preposterous plot and lots of special effects. The problem here is that nobody could possible survive through any of this, and the special effects become a substitute for any meaningful plot. Even taken on its own terms, the movie makes no sense. Sandra Bullock has become an astronaut but lacks even the basic skills for that occupation. She tells us she always crash landed the flight simulator, and we find her thumbing through an instruction manual about the size of the instructions for a DVD player to figure out how to safely pilot a space craft back to earth. She even picks the buttons eeny, meany, miney, mo style. Add to this the contrived scenario that she has not only lost a child but also is "revived" and given a reason to live by the now dead George Clooney appearing in a dream sequence. And how great a movie can it really be where there is only one character (and almost no dialog) on camera for most of the film. The special effects are impressive, but what they've obviously done is use computer graphics to create all the weightless effects. As such, things remain weightless even when they shouldn't be, and you eventually become more interested in looking for the screw-ups than watching the movie. Please, please, please. Will someone make a movie with a clever plot that keeps you guessing to the end and with interesting and passably believable characters.