Review of Lost in Space (1998) by Ven-Wede — 11 Jan 2012

It's hard to know where to start with this mess of a movie when almost everything is so horribly wrong. The writing is absolutely appalling ("Within these eggsacks lives a monster race of spiders!"), the direction is non-existent, the plot flails around at random, and the effects are incredibly dated.

However, most of all, what truly makes Lost in Space a wretched experience, is the cast. Oftentimes the robot (simply named 'Robot') has more emotional depth than the human characters. William Hurt and Matt LeBlanc put on embarrassingly awful performances, and being the two male leads, this is unforgivable.

Lines are just lackadaisically read in standard middle-shots no matter the scenario. Gary Oldman brings his usual A-grade ham, and Jared Harris uses a bizarre cartoon-character like speech pattern for his role.

The film is not offensively bad, but most certainly is not worth the two-hours of its running time.