After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

An example of bad writing is when you want to get to an idea: Guy appears 35 years in the future and is a fish out of water - a single joke movie. So, how do you get to this idea?--by bad writing: having a family live in a bomb shelter for 35 years. The movie doesn't deal with the psychological depression, rotting food, removal of waste, things aging, breaking down...etc. The 35 years pass as though this was a shelter funded by NASA. In short, suspend your disbelief so we can get to the funny situation of a guy showing up in a future far from the supposedly 1950s bland homogeneous lifestyle that appeared on some TV shows at the time. This has been done in other movies and done much better. So, their house is not just turned into a mall...but the lily white middle class neighborhood becomes a porn infested ghetto in 35 years....it's OK...suspending your disbelief is what you are supposed to do for the entire film. It just can't get any dumber.

"Blast from the Past" is pleasant and amusing, while delivering an interesting commentary on social values and the deterioration of manners, education and other aspects of society. Brendan Fraser is perfect as Adam, a Renaissance man with superb theoretical social skills but inexperience, so initially comes off as nothing more than a likable doofus, but gradually grows into the gentleman he was trained to become. His character's innocence, naïveté and tendency to view issues as B&W dichotomies represent society's world view in the 1950s and 1960s. Christopher Walken delivers an unusually understated performance and steals the film in the very last scene. Alicia Silverstone does as well as can be expected with the material she was given, but her Eve character is underdeveloped. She seems like an okay sort of girl next door, but doesn't offer enough to justify Adam's fascination with her to the exclusion of several other girls who superficially seem more obvious choices. She has a competing love interest in Cliff, but it never seems clear why she loved him before and doesn't love him now but is still a bit fixated on him. The relationship seems a bit contrived. He's there when the plot needs a low point for Adam but conveniently absent at other times. And it doesn't make much sense that alpha male Cliff would have moved in with her rather than inviting her to move in with him, or that he wouldn't park in front of her house. Eve's entire character also seems contrived. She doesn't seem the type who would frequent the trendy nightclub they visit or to have a gay roommate. While the film is amusing, it falls short of hilarious. Much of the humor is fairly subtle. Many jokes and gags require lengthy setups. The writers don't fully utilize all of the comic tools in their arsenal. There aren't many sight gags other than Adam's unstylish suit. Recurring and 1-2-3 gags aren't used very effectively. The baseball cards and baseball game don't escalate the humor. There are a few verbal gags and double entendres, such as gay/happy, but there's room for many more. The foreground and background aren't used effectively. At one point Eve and her gay roommate Troy enter a porn shop looking for Adam. They jump up and down on the floor, to determine if there's a basement, but it's done very seriously. Cut twice to a customer clutching an armload of VHS tapes and backing away as if they are weird. The Pakistani shop owner approaches, wearing a lot of gold jewelry in what may or may not have been intended as a politically incorrect commentary on the influence of immigrants growing rich by peddling porn. They have an exchange that includes one of the best jokes in the movie, then ask about a rear entrance. Including the setup, the scene lasts for about eighty seconds. It could have been shortened by showing the customer in the background instead of in separate shots. The customer is overweight and looks a bit nerdish or borderline weird. There are a number of things they could have done to make the scene funnier. He could have dropped a tape at Eve's feet and she could have picked it up for him only to have him deny it was his. He could have hurriedly replaced a movie and asked the shopkeeper if he carries any historical documentaries. He could have approached Eve and asked her if she was Dixie Normous, the famous porn star, and asked if she would autograph the box for him. Troy does a little dance step in an effort to see if the floor sounds hollow. He could have gotten on his knees and put his ear to the floor. That could have led to a sight gag and physical comedy. Except for the one joke, which was admittedly one of the best in the movie, the setting could have been changed to a barbershop or grocery store. They didn't push the envelope or try to squeeze every laugh they could out of the scene. In part, they seem to have tried to be inoffensive, going as far as to blur the images of bare breasts on the video jackets, possibly trying to maintain the tone and sensitivities of the 1950s and 1960s. For their efforts, the film still got a PG-13 rating. But what's the point? Viewers who would be most likely to appreciate the references to manners, mores and cultural references of that period would have been in their forties or fifties in 1999 when the film was released. Much of the humor would have made no sense to younger viewers. Some aspects of the movie are simply not funny. A character becomes alcoholic. Another character goes stir-crazy. A plane crashes in a residential neighborhood. While they take pains to suggest there were no casualties, including having the plane go vertical before nosediving, plane crashes simply aren't funny. Consequently, the film has an uneven tone. But the trade-off is a cinematic billet doux to a lost age of innocence.

Blast from the Past (1999): Dir: Hugh Wilson / Cast: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley: Refreshing comedy full of ideas about realization particularly due to mixed signals that hide this family for three decades. In 1962 Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek prepare for the holocaust by building an underground shelter. She is pregnant with her first child. A plane crashes on their house giving them the wrong idea and they escape down a hatch that locks automatically. Walken enters the world of the 1990's but shocked at the changes. Their son goes up in search of a wife while the father recovers from health issues. Conclusion seems hopeless in an absent-minded manner. Directed by Hugh Wilson who made the hilarious first Police Academy. Brendan Fraser brings innocence and curiosity to an amusing character whose fate is obvious. Alicia Silverstone is merely a prop who asks all the right questions yet doesn't know what viewers already know, which is that she will end up with him. Walken and Spacek are terrific in the film's premise but losing all those years by the film's end is somewhat depressing. Dave Foley plays Silverstone's gay roommate who offers Fraser a makeover but the role is not overly broad. Theme regards change and culture through time and the result is an entertaining blast of a comedy. Score: 6 ½ / 10

Released in 1999, "Blast from the Past" is a dramedy about a couple in 1962 who mistakenly think a nuclear war has started and so lock themselves in a bomb shelter for 35 years until the radiation dissipates. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek play the couple. The latter has a baby almost immediately and, when he's grown-up, he's sent to the surface in the late 90s where he (Brendan Fraser) experiences serious culture shock.This is an entertaining fish-out-of-water dramedy highlighted by Fraser's innocent and wide-eyed antics and Alicia Silverstone as his potential girlfriend. The bomb shelter sequences are generally dull, but the film picks up whenever Fraser or Silverstone are on screen. The film's quite good and could've been great if just a little more effort was put into fleshing out the potential of the plot and actors. Silverstone is gorgeous and effective, but somewhat underutilized. Nevertheless, "Blast from the Past" is a must.The film runs 112 minutes and was shot in the Los Angeles area.GRADE: B