# Blast from the Past (film)

Blast from the Past is a 1999 American romantic comedy science fantasy adventure film directed and co-produced by Hugh Wilson, based on a story by Wilson—who co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Kelly—and starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, and Dave Foley. The film focuses on a man who was born and brought up in a Cold War–era fallout shelter built by his survivalist, anti-Communist father, and emerges into the modern world 35 years later, where his innocence and old-fashioned views put him at comedic odds with others.
The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a box-office disappointment.

## Plot

In 1962, eccentric American scientist Dr. Calvin Webber believes nuclear war with the Soviet Union is imminent and builds a secret fallout shelter beneath his backyard. Alarmed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Calvin takes his pregnant wife Helen into the shelter. When an unexpected mechanical failure aboard an F-86 Sabre causes the aircraft to crash into the house above, Calvin assumes the worst and activates the shelter's time-locks for 35 years. With the house completely destroyed by the crash, the Webbers' neighbors and authorities assume they were killed, and their property is left abandoned.
Helen gives birth to Adam, who is educated to a high standard by his father (including becoming fluent in several languages, including French and German) and grows up on 1950s-era pop culture such as I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, and pop standards by Perry Como and Dean Martin. Above ground, a diner opens in 1965, where a young resident named Melker gets his first job working as a soda jerk. The diner is sold and turned into a pizzeria, then becomes a punk club named Purgatory, as the suburban neighborhood deteriorates over the decades into an inner-city ghetto. By 1995, Melker is a bitter middle-aged alcoholic living in the club's condemned remains.
When the shelter unlocks in 1997, Calvin mistakes the now-blighted neighborhood for a postapocalyptic wasteland of irradiated mutants and encounters an adult video store. He decides the family must stay underground over the objections of Helen, who unlike Calvin (who enjoys the seclusion) and Adam (who knows nothing else), has never taken to living in the shelter. However, with supplies running out and Calvin falling ill, Adam leaves the shelter for the first time to obtain food. On the surface he meets Melker, who had witnessed Calvin in his radiation suit rising through the floor, and becomes convinced that Adam is a god. Marveling at the outside world, Adam purchases supplies, but then cannot remember his way back to the elevator.
Trying to sell his father's classic baseball cards at a hobby shop, Adam meets Eve Rustikov, who stops the store owner from cheating Adam and is fired. Eve drives Adam to a Holiday Inn in exchange for a rare card, but returns the next morning out of guilt. Adam asks her to help him. Unaware of the value of money, Adam agrees to her request for $1,000 a week, while also asking Eve to help him find a wife who is "not a mutant" and is from Pasadena, California, per his mother's advice. Adam meets Eve's gay housemate and best friend Troy, who provides him with advice and a fashion makeover.
Eve and Troy take Adam to a '40s swing-style nightclub to find him a wife. Adam attracts the attention of several women, including Eve's nemesis Sophie, who speaks fluent French. Jealous, Eve reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Cliff and gets him to provoke Adam into a fight, relenting when Adam demonstrates his boxing skills (having trained every day with his father). Eve is disgusted and goes home, where Troy later tells her Adam left the club with Sophie. Just as a panicked Eve is about to leave to stop Adam from spending the night with Sophie, Adam returns, explaining that he politely rejected Sophie's advances, as he could only think about Eve. Eve and he kiss, but when Adam admits the truth about his past and his desire to take her to be his wife "underground", she asks him to leave, believing him to be mentally ill.
Finding the club, where Melker has recruited a full congregation to worship him, Adam returns to Eve's house, where she is waiting with psychiatrist Dr. Nina Aron and her associate Mr. Brown to have him committed. Initially cooperating, Adam escapes, though not before asking Eve and Troy to collect his things and pay his hotel bill. In his hotel room, Troy and Eve find toiletries and clothing from the '60s and absurdly valuable stock certificates in companies like IBM (which Calvin had previously written off as "worthless") and are convinced that Adam is not crazy and was telling the truth the whole time.
As Melker and his cult load supplies into the shelter, Calvin prepares to seal his family inside again. Troy takes Eve to the adult bookstore beside the club to find Adam, but without success. Just as Troy and a despondent Eve are about to leave, Eve spots Adam outside the club, and the two share a passionate embrace. Adam takes her to meet his parents. Impressed with Eve, Calvin and Helen agree to set the shelter's locks for two months while Adam and Eve make arrangements. The two stay for dinner at the shelter, during which Eve reveals to Helen that she hails from Pasadena, much to Helen's delight. During this time, Adam and Eve sell the stocks to build his parents a new home in the country, identical to their house that was destroyed, and purchase and restore a red 1960 Cadillac convertible. They help Melker rebuild the pub into a '50s-themed nightclub after convincing him that Adam is not God.
After mentioning that Eve is Ukrainian, Adam reveals to his father that an atomic war had not occurred; a plane crashed in their backyard, and the Soviet Union collapsed and the Cold War is over. As Helen calls the boys in, as they are having pot roast, Adam goes in and Calvin secretly plans to build a new fallout shelter. Eve watches while playing with her engagement ring as Calvin takes visual measurements.

## Cast

* Brendan Fraser as Adam Webber, a man who was raised in a fallout shelter
** Hayden Tank as Adam Webber (age 3+1⁄2)
** Ryan Sparks as Adam Webber (age 8)
** Douglas Smith as Adam Webber (age 11)
* Alicia Silverstone as Eve Rustikov, a Ukrainian hobby shop worker that Adam falls for
* Christopher Walken as Calvin Webber, a scientist and the father of Adam who built the family's fallout shelter
* Sissy Spacek as Helen Webber, the mother of Adam and the wife of Calvin
* Dave Foley as Troy, a gay best friend of Eve's
* Joey Slotnick as Melker (credited as "Soda Jerk"), a soda jerk residing in the ruins of a club that the Webber family's house used to be
* Dale Raoul as Mom
* Don Yasso as Jerry
* Scott Thomson as Young Psycho
* Rex Linn as Dave
* Cynthia Mace as Betty
* Harry S. Murphy as Bob
* Hugh Wilson as Levy
* Bill Gratton as Eve's boss
* Michael Hagiwara as a Japanese Produce Clerk
* Nathan Fillion as Cliff, Eve's ex-boyfriend
* Carmen Moré as Sophie, a rival of Eve's
* Jenifer Lewis as Dr. Nina Aron, a psychiatrist for the County Family Service Department that tries to have Adam institutionalized
* Brian Blondell as Mr. Brown, Dr. Aron's associate
* Sonya Eddy as a postal worker that Adam calls a Negro upon first encountering her
* Robert Sacchi as Bogart DJ
* Grant Baciocco as a drunken club goer (uncredited)

## Reception
### Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews from critics. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 58% of 81 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Cute idea, but not consistently funny". On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 48 out of 100 based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "the movie is funny and entertaining in all the usual ways, yes, but I was grateful that it tried for more: that it was actually about something, that it had an original premise, that it used satire and irony and had sly undercurrents." Nell Minow of Common Sense Media gave this a film a rate three stars out of five, saying that "leisurely comedy has no surprises or special insights, but it does have attractive performers." Janet Maslin of The New York Times writing that "while this comedy strives for teenage appeal above ground, it's mostly the fallout shelter notion that makes for the laughs." She also noted that the movie "inevitably gives Adam an Eve." GamesRadar+'s Yael Shuv rated the film two stars out of five, stating that "it's quite fun to watch [...]." She criticized the screenplay for "lacks a driving force beyond showing Adam different facets of modern and oh-so-fashionable LA" and the movie "scattered with tired clichés." She also criticized the actors Dave Foley and Alicia Silverstone, calling him "a flat performance that does nothing to liven the weak lines he's been handed" and calls her "still a one-film wonder, utterly clueless on how to play an adult woman." She also describes the movie "Big meets The Brady Bunch meets Back to the Future (reversed)." David Eimer of Empire gave the film a rating of also three stars out of five, saying "a quirky comedy that tugs at the heart and wrings some decent laughs out of its well-worn fish-out-of-water premise."
DVD Talk's Aaron Beierle reviewed the film on the DVD release, calling it "absolutely frustrating, mainly because although it brings an interesting plot to the table, it has absolutely nothing new or fresh to say." He thought that the writers are "had added some ideas to the story rather than trying to string it along from joke to joke, it might have worked."

### Box office

Blast from the Past opened in North American theaters on February 12, 1999, and took in $7,771,066, earning it fifth place at the box office for the weekend. It ultimately made a profit, grossing $40.3 million worldwide against its $35 million budget, despite only grossing $26.5 million within the United States.

## Soundtrack

* "A Little Belief" – Celeste Prince
* "Honey Please" – Sonichrome
* "I See the Sun" – Tommy Henriksen
* "I Will Buy You a New Life" – Everclear
* "Round and Round" – Perry Como
* "It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" – R.E.M.
* "Mr. Zoot Suit" – Ingrid Lucia And The Flying Neutrinos
* "Political Science" – Randy Newman
* "Pretty Babies" – Dishwalla
* "So Long Toots" – Cherry Poppin' Daddies
* "Trou Macacq" – Squirrel Nut Zippers
* "Drawing Flies" – Soundgarden