Blast From The Past

Blast From The Past is one of those innocent into civilisation films in the tradition of Nell, Bad Boy Bubby, The Truman Show, nearly all of the Star Trek flicks and many more, including Frankenstein; movies where at least for a significant segment, the central character is plagued by the inconsistencies and untruthfulness of modern society.

That Blast From The Past achieves this with a good deal of charm, plenty of wit and a fair amount of lightly delivered social comment is testament to it being well worth a viewing.

There's a long prologue, which is probably the most entertaining section. Christopher Walken plays Calvin. He's a rich rocket scientist who's built a fantastic bomb shelter under his house, one which seems to mirror his house in many respects.

It's Cuban missile crisis time in the U.S. and on the night that Kennedy lays down the rules to the Russians on Calvin's black and white T.V..

After Calvin has ushered his pregnant wife Helen, (played absolutely delightfully by Sissy 'Carrie' Spacek), into the fallout shelter, a war plane mistakenly falls onto the house convincing the pair that the bomb has been dropped.

They lock the doors for 30 years to avoid radiation.

Walken and Spacek flesh out their characters beautifully. Calvin seems content in his retreat, happy to maintain the life support systems he has built to keep the three of them alive. Their son, who they aptly call Adam (played by Brendan Fraser when Adam starts to look for his oats) joins them only a few days after the lock in.

But how might Calvin's character evolve when he emerges from his crypt and finds out that a bomb wasn't dropped after all? That's for you to find out. His behaviour isn't surprising, it's obvious really, but sometimes the obvious can be enlightening.

And how might Mum react to 30 years locked in with her two men. She might become a quietly desperate dipsomaniac. I wish Sissy Spacek would act in more films.

In Bad Boy Bubby (Australia's terrific and rather sick nod to the Blast From The Past genre), Bubby emerged from his crypt and had a cult develop around him.

Blast From The Past takes the same road but whereas Bubby was a fractured soul,Brendan Fraser's Adam is as pure as the proverbial driven snow, good looking and a great dancer to boot.

One of his missions is to find an Eve and bring her back to the shelter. Dad is convinced that most of the women must be mutants up there and we'd be left wondering if maybe that really is true, at least in comparison to the sweet boy that is Adam.

Mum in one of her hilariously droll murmurs just hopes that Adam might find one that doesn't glow in the dark and for some reason comes from Pasadena.

Eve is played by Alicia 'Clueless' Silverstone. She's scatty, shallow and the required nice girl at heart for this type of movie. She has her doubts about Adam, of course, and in the one big plot blunder in Blast From The Past calls in the authorities, but she's better than the wallpaper for the film that many actresses would have been.

I don't need to tell you that it all turns out well in the end. That's obvious from the opening credits. But I must hasten to encourage you to take the appropriate position, one that will allow you to kiss your bum goodbye - if the bomb ever does drop.