SphereSphere was really disappointing. A lover of Sci Fi films like me, who's also an admirer of James Cameron's amazing The Abyss, Sphere's obvious predecessor, would have to be really looking forward to the underwater Sci fi thriller that Sphere was advertised to be. But the results were rather wet.The cast looked promising. Dustin Hoffman has been known to do the odd good turn in front of a movie camera and we've been breathlessly waiting for something terrific from Sharon Stone for years now since that no pants shot in Basic Instinct. It isn't. Samuel L. Jackson, The King Of Cool has been wowing us with every role since he rolled into contention with that afroed gangster in Pulp Fiction and Liev Schreiber, the puffy faced menacer from Scream and Scream 2, is starting to become a face we recognise. The director of Sphere has provided us with some mixed film offerings but has done enough excellent films to have us panting for Sphere to be a real beauty. Toys was abysmal and the recent Wag The Dog was mixed but Barry Levinson also directed Good Morning Vietnam, Donnie Brascoe and Sleepers. Levinson also wrote Sleepers, Tootsie (uncredited) and Silent Movie amongst others and that's not a bad list, but perhaps he should have written the script for Sphere as well because that's where Sphere stank and sunk. Sphere's story revolves around a spaceship that has been found 1000 feet down in the ocean from which a hum can be heard. The boffins gather. The psychologist (Dustin Hoffman), the mathematician (Sam Jackson) the biochemist (Sharon Stone) and the astrophysicist (Liev Schreiber) are brought together to parlay with the aliens that are thought to be aboard. They find a sphere in the spacecraft and so far so good, but then Sphere turns into a tame psychological battle between the good folk on the bottom of the ocean. There's lots of running about on the ocean floor being chased by nasties with in particular Sharon stone saying things like "We're not going to make it. We're not going to make it." Oh well. Jackson manages this dross fairly adroitly but it would have been better really if they had just all drowned before the film and the audience did. A lot of the damage was done too by the shear improbability of it all, particularly from a diving point of view. It's all well and good to suspend disbelief when you go to the movies but the physics of what these people were able to do 300 metres below the surface of the water was a joke. No, I'm afraid that Sphere has about as many worthwhile angles as well, a Sphere. 1 Drowned Fly |