Blast From the Past (1999)

Entertainment Weekly
"...Wonderfully inventive....Walken and Spacek crackle..." 03/05/1999 p.44

New York Times
"...Much retro chic and visual wit to accompany the story's wildest notions..." 02/12/1999 p.E10

USA Today
"...BLAST feels positively timely if not downright positive about the human race's ability to endure..." 02/12/1999 p.8E

Los Angeles Times
"...Fraser is getting more assured and sophisticated about his innocence....He gives an engaging and endearing performance..." 02/12/1999 p.F10

Chicago Sun-Times
"...A quirky comedy....It's a sophisticated and observant film....The movie is funny and entertaining..." 02/12/1999 p.27

New York Times 0 of 10
Blast From the Past tells the not automatically funny story of a family so nuclear that it scurries into its fallout shelter in 1962 and spends 35 years underground... Fortunately, the Webber shelter is a jaunty monument to kitsch, and the Webbers themselves are an appealingly batty crew. Calvin (Christopher Walken) is the film's funniest character, a "borderline nutcase" fond of Dr. Pepper served hot... The Webbers have raised a strapping hunk named Adam, who has retained his wide-eyed innocence while growing up... "I wish I could meet a girl," he sighs on his 35th birthday, only to have his father wisecrack: "One that doesn't glow in the dark, I hope." As directed by Hugh Wilson (The First Wives Club) and written by Wilson and Bill Kelly, Blast From the Past inevitably gives Adam an Eve. Sent upstairs into the world on a reconnaissance mission, he meets a hard-boiled, jaded babe played by Alicia Silverstone... Ms. Silverstone, in Mary Pickford ringlets, often winces and grimaces to express emotion, strengthening the impression that tough-talking Eve is indeed a pain. Besides, although she is the film's dewy-eyed creature, it's Fraser who once again plays the ingenue. Here is yet another role (as in Encino Man) that has him emerging from oblivion into gee-whiz innocence, adored by a camera that ogles his every move. It's a mode that certainly looks dopey here compared to his first-rate performance in Gods and Monsters, but his presence is enough to keep Blast From the Past going. Fraser is even seen recruiting two beautiful women for a wild jitterbug number meant to bring down the house, while Ms. Silverstone's Eve pouts on the sidelines. Still, while this comedy strives for teen-age appeal above ground, it's mostly the fallout shelter notion that makes for the laughs, especially when the Webbers' mysterious arrival prompts an amusingly burned-out neighbor (Joey Slotnick) to make them the center of a religious cult hallowing Calvin's words ("Don't touch my elevator!"). - Janet Maslin
 
San Francisco Examiner 0 of 10
Nobody plays a naif like Brendan Fraser. From his Encino Man to a guileless rock musician in Airheads to George of the Jungle, he manages to imbue his characters with a sense of sweetness and vulnerability - and complete cluelessness - and somehow make it all look attractive. Don't cluck your tongue - this takes technique. Try as I might while watching the new comedy Blast From the Past, I couldn't imagine any other young actor being able to deliver lines like: "Hot diggity dog! Thank you for calling me on my telephone!" and "Oh my stars - a Negro!" and have them sound anything less than stupid. Playing Adam Webber, a young man emerging from a bomb shelter where he's lived his entire life, Fraser is a revelation. A mix of lunky awkwardness and gee-whiz optimism, he is a man on a mission: to find supplies for his parents, who are still underground, and find a wife for himself. Not like a sailor looking for some action, Adam wants to find a life-mate to cherish... And although Fraser's performance is the thing on which Blast From the Past hangs, there are many other good things to recommend it. Equally splendid in their smaller roles are Sissy Spacek as Adam's claustrophobic mother, Christopher Walken as his mad-scientist father, and Dave Foley, who does a memorable turn as Eve's gay roommate, Troy... Spacek and Walken are pure comic energy: Spacek insists on greeting Armageddon with her oven mitts on and dressed to the Donna-Reed-nines, and Walken is typically weird, mixing cocktails and anti-Commie rhetoric. Silverstone, while she does have her believeable moments, depends too much on a limited number of gestures - the exasperated look, the glare, the thick-lipped come-hither. But she does manage to convey vulnerability and sadness through her cynicism. We hope she will soften toward the love-struck Adam, and when she does, it's genuinely satisfying. But the best reason to see the movie is Fraser. In his hands, Adam is not someone you'd scorn, he's someone you'd take in - or even follow into a bomb shelter. - Jane Ganahl