The Red and Black

By JOSH MASSEY Staff Writer

"Lost" is spaced.

After New Line Cinema's massive publicity attack for its new franchise, based on the 1960s TV show "Lost in Space," the film sails into theaters today with all the velocity of a tree sloth.

Dumbed-down in nearly every aspect, this science-fiction howler is full of more cheese and bad dialogue than 10 years' worth of "Star Trek." "Lost in Space" is this year's "Batman and Robin."

William Hurt, after an established career in smaller films such as "Kiss of a Spider Woman" and most recently "Dark City," hits big budget-land and looks, pardon the pun, lost. He's professor John Robinson, the head of a clan of scientific geniuses. For years they've been at work on a plan to colonize a far-away planet because, as Robinson tells it, "in two decades, the Earth will be unable to support human life."

Robinson announces to his family they will have to spend the next decade alone in outer space aboard the Jupiter 2, and reaction is mixed. Wife Maureen (Mimi Rogers) thinks it will be good family time, daughter Judy (Heather Graham) and son Will (Jack Johnson) look forward to the scientific marvel, and youngest daughter Penny (Lacey Chabert, "Party of Five") wants to stay on Earth because she'll miss, among other things, kissing and chocolate.

Of course, the movie wouldn't live up to its title unless something bad happened. Leave it up to Hollywood's perennial bad guy, Gary Oldman as Dr. Zachary Smith, to foil their plans.

When a sabotage attempt fails, Smith ends up in the Robinson's ship (along with pilot Major Don West, played by Matt LeBlanc of "Friends"). An onboard explosion sends the Jupiter 2 hurtling toward the sun - and the only way Major West can save the family is by blindly sending them into deep space, without a clue as to where they will end up.

And now the Robinsons are lost. So is anybody who buys a ticket.

The movie takes the Robinsons to various locales, few of which stir interest. They battle space spiders that don't seem scary, and a big glowing bubble is meant to spell danger - if, in fact, it were frightening.

What good ideas "Lost in Space" has going for it are ruined by the script, written by Akiva Goldsman (the scribe of, surprise, "Batman and Robin").

Time-travel, even a sense of morbidity late in the film, are destroyed by the fact "Lost in Space" is about smart people who turn dumb when the story requires it. When the Robinsons travel through a rift in space, they find an deserted American ship, floating motionless. "It's one of ours," West says, but remarks he's never seen anything quite like it. Once aboard, they find an advanced version of their robot, a video of one of West's friends (who looks eerily older) and mounds of dust, which would've taken years to collect.

It's clear that the Robinsons have traveled through time, but none of the characters seems to grasp the obvious. Only 45 minutes later, John finally says, "Gee, do ya think we coulda time traveled?" - and he says it with such a revelatory beam that the filmmakers obviously intended the audience not to have figured that out for itself.

It would be easy to harp on the stiff acting - particularly Rogers' dead line delivery and LeBlanc's hopeless swagger - but it's unfair. With lines like "I'm putting the pedal to the metal" and, when chastising the children, "We're going to turn this ship right around," Marlon Brando couldn't do a good job. Only Hurt and Oldman, who manages to deliver tired lines like "Give my regards to oblivion" with pizazz, emerge unscathed (it would've been more interesting if Oldman played the father and Hurt the bad guy, but this film is intent on being anything but interesting).

The inclusion of a pet later in the film, a computer-generated monkey, throws the film over the edge in a blatant toy-store marketing move. That's what "Lost in Space" ultimately feels like - marketing. Nothing but a commercial for a video game, breakfast cereal, theme park ride, or, inevitably, "Lost in Space 2."

Don't get "Lost" in the hype.

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