Themes: Fish Out of Water, Opposites Attract, Culture Clash
Main Cast: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley
Release Year: 1999
Country: US
Run Time: 111 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
In 1962, Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) was a brilliant but somewhat paranoid scientist living with his Donna Reed-esque wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek), in Los Angeles. In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a plane crashed into the Webber's yard. Mistaking the blast for "the big one," the Webbers moved into their elaborate bomb shelter to wait out the half-life of radioactive fallout. In the shelter, now a sort of time capsule, Calvin and Helen conceived and raised their son Adam (played as an adult by Brendan Fraser). For 35 years, Adam was raised on Jackie Gleason, Perry Como, and stories about life on the surface. Calvin taught his son about science, baseball, and communists while Mom taught Adam about dancing, good manners, and charming young ladies. Just in time, too, as Adam is sent to the surface to gather supplies and find a wife, preferably a nice, non-mutant girl from Pasadena with which to repopulate the world. Once this "fish out of water" story is set up, the fish, Adam, is set adrift in a sea of supermarkets and adult bookstores, but is soon caught by Eve Rustikov (Alicia Silverstone). Completely lost above ground, Adam enlists Eve's help to navigate his new world and find the supplies on his list. The literally sheltered Adam falls for this bitter, cynical, street-smart woman who grew up in a bleak Los Angeles with little use for love. Living with her gay roommate, Troy (Dave Foley), Eve has had her hopes chipped away by a long line of dead-end jobs and loser boyfriends. When the throwback Adam enters her life with his sunny disposition, seersucker jacket, and joy at seeing the sky, she can't help but fall in love. ~ Ron Wells, All Movie Guide
Review
The double entendre of the title -- a reference to Cold War atomic detonation as well as a common cliché -- is the most clever thing about Blast From the Past, a fish-out-of-water comedy whose original premise is a lot less airtight than your average fallout shelter. Brendan Fraser may not play a cartoon character, as he's basically done in Dudley Do-Right (also directed by Hugh Wilson) and George of the Jungle, but those admittedly marketable skills are just as over-modulated as ever. Equally cartoonish is Alicia Silverstone, though more for her appearance than her whiny acting style. As the former teen star transitioned uncomfortably into her adult years, she developed a puffy, collagen look. That leaves Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek as the best things about Wilson's film, and they regrettably disappear for its middle portion. Walken's comedic skills, demonstrated during numerous stints hosting Saturday Night Live, have been tragically underutilized throughout his career, and Spacek seems to have fun with her own vacation from dramatic work. More of their eccentric parenting and less of Fraser's naïve pratfalls through modern existence might have broken down some of the formula -- but probably also narrowed the film's popular appeal and its status as an accessible romantic comedy. As Silverstone's homosexual sidekick, Dave Foley gets good laughs by trusting his instincts to tone down the flamboyance expected from such a role. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
Joey Slotnick - Soda Jerk; Dale Raoul - Mom; Scott Thomson - Young Psycho; Harrison Young - Bum; Nathan Fillion - Cliff
Credit
Ted Berner - Art Director, Denise Chamian - Casting, Adam Shenkman - Choreography, Mary Kane - Co-producer, Mark Bridges - Costume Designer, Louis D'Esposito - First Assistant Director, Hugh Wilson - Director, Don Brochu - Editor, Claire Rudnick Polstein - Executive Producer, Sunil Perkash - Executive Producer, Amanda Stern - Executive Producer, Steve Dorff - Composer (Music Score), Steve Tyrell - Musical Direction/Supervision, Bob Ziembicki - Production Designer, Jose Luis Alcaine - Cinematographer, Renny Harlin - Producer, Hugh Wilson - Producer, Michael Taylor - Set Designer, Mark Hopkins Mcnabb - Sound Mixer, Hugh Wilson - Screenwriter, Bill Kelly - Screenwriter
This plot summary may be too long or overly detailed. Please help improve it by removing unnecessary details and making it more concise. (September 2009)
Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) is a brilliant, eccentric, and paranoidCaltechnuclear physicist (see mad scientist), living the stereotypical happy 1960s life during the Cold War. His extreme fear of a nuclear holocaust leads him to build an enormous self-sustaining fallout shelter beneath his suburbanSan Fernando Valley, Los Angeles home. One night, while he and his pregnant wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek), are entertaining guests, a family friend comes to inform him that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev are getting into a debate. The family turns on their television, and watch in horror. When the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, they ask their guests to leave, and they head down into the shelter. Meanwhile, a USAFpilot has engine problems with his F-86 Sabre; he is ordered to eject, believing his jet will crash into the Pacific Ocean. Just as they descend into the shelter, the plane veers off and crashes into the Webber home, leaving their friends and family to believe the family has died. The family, having seen the resulting fireball just as they lock themselves in their shelter, believe that the unthinkable has happened and that they are the sole survivors of a nuclear war. The locks on the shelter are set for 35 years and cannot be overridden by anyone inside or outside the shelter - for "their own protection" according to Calvin Webber. They also realize they had accidentally left the radio upstairs; it is now destroyed.
A few days after the locks have been engaged, Mrs. Webber goes into labor, and gives birth to a baby boy, who they name Adam. During the roughly 35 years they are down in the shelter, the world above drastically changes, while the Webber's life remains frozen in 1962. Adam is taught in several languages, all school subjects, dance, boxing, and many other things. The family passes time watching black and white movies via a projector. Adam is given his father's baseball card collection, and shares in IBM, Polaroid, and AT&T.
In the present (which would have been October 1997, though this is not specifically stated in the film) the timer on the locks releases, and Calvin decides to check out the surroundings above the shelter (in full protective gear), which has turned into a ghetto. He mistakes this for a post-apocalyptic world and wants his wife and grown son (Brendan Fraser) to stay in hiding, but suffers from chest pain. Adam, who is naïve but well-educated, is sent for supplies and help, thus beginning his adventures.
Much of the humor in the film is derived from his being unaccustomed to the lifestyle of the present (such as using the term negro, and believing "shit" is a French compliment), believing "gay" means happy, and finding awe in simple things of modernity. Early on, he meets Eve Rustikoff (Alicia Silverstone) at a card store, where she works, and where he went to sell his father's classic baseball cards. She stops the store owner from ripping Adam off and is immediately fired. Adam asks Eve to take him to the Holiday Inn, in exchange for a Baseball Card, worth 4,000 dollars. The next morning, at the Holiday Inn, Eve comes to give back the very expensive Baseball Card to Adam, and after a brief conversation, Eve informs Adam that she has to look for a new job. In exchange for $1,000 a week, Adam asks Eve to work for him, she agrees to help him buy the supplies and his search for a "non-mutant" wife from Pasadena. Meanwhile, Adam meets Eve's homosexual Housemate and Best friend, played by (Dave Foley), who offers advice and commentary as Adam and Eve fall in love.
At the conclusion of the movie, Adam's father and mother move into a home at the surface that their son has had constructed with the wealth he has acquired from selling stocks, which acquired great value from splits over the years. Only his father is informed that the catastrophe they went into seclusion for was in fact a plane crash, for fear his mother would be incredibly angry at her husband for her years of mistaken confinement.
The film finishes with Adam's mother at peace with her newfound freedom from the shelter, Adam and Eve engaged to be married, while Calvin, certain that the "Commies" have faked the collapse of the Soviet Union, starts pacing out measurements for a new fallout shelter.
The film received mixed to generally positive reviews from critics. In Rotten Tomatoes The film had an overall score of 59% of the comments positive. In Metacritic had a score of 48% with a 9.0 / 10 "Mixed or average reviews".
Box office
Blast from the Past opened in North American theaters on February 12, 1999. The film opened to #5 ($7,771,066) on Valentine's Day 1999 behind #1 (Message in a Bottle).
