Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton has signed up for a dangerous mission, a bold miniaturisation experiment. But when the lab is attacked and he is accidentally injected into Jack Putter, a hypochondriac supermarket clerk, he and Jack need to team up fast to recover a vital silicon chip needed to restore him to normal size.
Innerspace is a brilliant but flawed film, which has a terrible first two scenes, but then almost instantly picks up into a great loopy sci-fi comedy thriller. Its problem is its script, which has some great central ideas (miniaturisation, espionage) but lumbers them with a boring love story involving that old Lois Lane heroine standby, the plucky reporter. The result is that the two male leads have to try and balance the more insane moments with conventional angst, while McCarthy (as a mad industrialist), Lewis (as a mad scientist), Picardo (as a mad smuggler) and Wells (as a mad killer) all have a whale of a time with a total comic-book approach. I suspect Chip Proser's original screenplay was much more of the latter, but the studio railed the filmmakers back into making a more mainstream film. If so that's a shame, but it's still a great movie, a terrific revision of Fantastic Voyage with excellent visual effects by Dennis Muren and Rob Bottin, as Tuck floats through Jack's bloodstream, clamps onto his optic nerve and fights a pitched battle in his stomach. It also features great sets by James Spencer, terrific costumes by Rosanna Norton (the first shot of McCarthy in his perfect white suit looking over the Golden Gate is sensational), cool stunts and great turns by all of Dante's regular bit players. Also, for bizarre casting, how about this; the key role of Ozzie the good-guy scientist is played by Dante's usual cameraman, John Hora (who didn't shoot this film), and very good he is too. Produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin' company, this is a thoroughly entertaining and very enjoyable gas of a movie which pretty much keeps you smiling throughout. Dante loves his crazy antics and directs with great aplomb, especially during the numerous chases and nervous confrontation scenes. I just get the feeling that he was a little constricted here, and could maybe have turned in an even crazier and better film.
Innerspace is a brilliant but flawed film, which has a terrible first two scenes, but then almost instantly picks up into a great loopy sci-fi comedy thriller. Its problem is its script, which has some great central ideas (miniaturisation, espionage) but lumbers them with a boring love story involving that old Lois Lane heroine standby, the plucky reporter. The result is that the two male leads have to try and balance the more insane moments with conventional angst, while McCarthy (as a mad industrialist), Lewis (as a mad scientist), Picardo (as a mad smuggler) and Wells (as a mad killer) all have a whale of a time with a total comic-book approach. I suspect Chip Proser's original screenplay was much more of the latter, but the studio railed the filmmakers back into making a more mainstream film. If so that's a shame, but it's still a great movie, a terrific revision of Fantastic Voyage with excellent visual effects by Dennis Muren and Rob Bottin, as Tuck floats through Jack's bloodstream, clamps onto his optic nerve and fights a pitched battle in his stomach. It also features great sets by James Spencer, terrific costumes by Rosanna Norton (the first shot of McCarthy in his perfect white suit looking over the Golden Gate is sensational), cool stunts and great turns by all of Dante's regular bit players. Also, for bizarre casting, how about this; the key role of Ozzie the good-guy scientist is played by Dante's usual cameraman, John Hora (who didn't shoot this film), and very good he is too. Produced by Steven Spielberg's Amblin' company, this is a thoroughly entertaining and very enjoyable gas of a movie which pretty much keeps you smiling throughout. Dante loves his crazy antics and directs with great aplomb, especially during the numerous chases and nervous confrontation scenes. I just get the feeling that he was a little constricted here, and could maybe have turned in an even crazier and better film.