Lost in Space (film): Really bad but somehow managed to make money

For people my age and and older "Lost in Space" is a television series from the 60's. When i was very young, these episodes would still come on TV from time to time but due to the existence of Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica, and of course Star Wars, it seemed pretty antiquated and hokey. This doesn't change the fact that it fondly remembered during the "science fiction struggles" of the 60's and how Star Trek definitely won that race.

When this reboot was announced in the late 90's I had to say that i had my doubts they would be able to pull it off since a majority of the people alive didn't really have any recollection of the original. Well, if by pulling it off means making their rather massive $80 million budget back, it was a success.

Everyone in that picture was a big star in 1998 and Matt LeBlanc was arguably the most famous. Having a chance to see "Joey" was a big part of the reason why anyone would bother to go and see this film.

Unfortunately for Matt LeBlanc, I think that the Friends Curse is most evident in him. It is simply impossible for me to see him as anyone other than Joey. His character is named Major Don West but everyone really knows that it is Major Joey Tribbiani.

Major Joey is meant to be a pilot of the highest caliber and also a very disciplined military tough guy. I can get the tough guy act because Joey was always that way anyhow. Unfortunately, the rest of his character just isn't believable. If anything it is kind of funny I suppose and maybe they were counting on that since the original Lost in Space was a semi-comedy anyway.

The original Lost in Space series follows the Robinson family as they become (surprise!) lost in space. In the 60's this was a sci-fi adaptation of Smith Family Robinson and that is evidenced by the fact that they are named the Robinsons. In the film, the story is relatively similar: For some reason the entire Robinson family needs to go on a mission with their professor parents in order to set up a "warp gate" for fast travel between the now dilapidated Earth and a planet called "Alpha Prime" which is meant to be New Earth.

Of course everything goes terribly wrong when the on board robot is reprogrammed to destroy the mission for some reason and the crew needs to use their hyperdrive to avoid colliding with the sun or something and they end up, just like the title says, "Lost in Space."

A lot of things happen and I would imagine they are meant to be visually appealing but even though it was nearly 20 years ago and we have to make some sort of allowances, the special effects, especially the space battles and later on a god-awful animated monkey thing, it just looks really bad.

New Line Cinema banked a LOT on this film: They had intended for it to spawn cartoons, a new series, books, and the merchandising rights for what they had hoped would be wildly popular children's toys. A vast majority of these plans were scrapped after the professional critics and the general public let out a collective "groan" in regards to this movie.

Because the world has no more ideas a series was eventually made and it is currently on Netflix. I haven't watched it but it appears to be far less comedy oriented that previous installments.

I am sure that New Line Cinema is extremely grateful for overseas audiences because it was only because of the near $70 box office take, mostly in Asia, this movie didn't lose a ton of money.

I do recommend that you watch this film just for a little while with remote firmly in hand if you are a fan of Friends. It is really funny to see Matt LeBlanc try as hard as he possibly can to not be Joey, only to end up acting exactly like Joey (he was filming Friends at the same time as filming this movie.) In my mind, that is really the only reason to watch this, because it is pretty bunk otherwise.