Blast from the Past (film)

Blast from the Past
Theatrical release poster on the box office in 1999 (Brendan Fraser and Alicia Silverstone)
Directed by	Hugh Wilson
Screenplay by	Hugh Wilson Bill Kelly
Story by	Hugh Wilson
Produced by	Amanda Stern Hugh Wilson Renny Harlin
Starring	Brendan Fraser Alicia Silverstone Christopher Walken Sissy Spacek Dave Foley
Cinematography	Jose Luis Alcaine
Edited by	Don Brochu
Music by	Steve Dorff
Distributed by	New Line Cinema
Release date	February 12, 1999 (1999-02-12)
Running time	112 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$35 million
Box office	$40,263,020

Blast from the Past is a 1999 romantic comedy film based on a story and directed by Hugh Wilson and starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, and Dave Foley.

Plot

Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) is a brilliant and eccentric Caltech nuclear physicist, living during the Cold War. His extreme fear of a nuclear holocaust leads him to build an enormous self-sustaining fallout shelter beneath his suburban home. One night, while he and his pregnant wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek), are entertaining guests, a family friend comes to inform him that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev are getting into a debate. The family turns on their television, and watch in horror. When the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, they ask their guests to leave, and they head down into the shelter. Meanwhile, a pilot is having problems with his plane; he is ordered to eject, believing his jet will crash into the Pacific Ocean. Just as the Webbers descend into the shelter, the plane veers off and crashes into the Webber home, leaving their friends and family to believe the family has died. The family, having seen the resulting fireball just as they lock themselves in their shelter, believe that the unthinkable has happened and that they are the sole survivors of a nuclear war. The locks on the shelter are set for 35 years and cannot be overridden by anyone inside or outside the shelter — for "their own protection" according to Calvin Webber.

A few days after the locks have been engaged, Mrs. Webber goes into labor and gives birth to a baby boy, whom they name Adam. During the roughly 35 years they are down in the shelter, the world above drastically changes, while the Webbers' life remains frozen in 1962. Adam is taught in several languages, all school subjects, dance, boxing, and many other things. The family passes time watching black and white films and kinescopes of television programs via a projector rigged to a television. Adam is given his father's baseball card collection and shares in various companies. In the present, the timer on the locks releases, and Calvin decides to check out the surroundings above the shelter (in full protective gear), which has turned into a ghetto. He mistakes this for a post-apocalyptic world and wants his wife and grown son (Brendan Fraser) to stay in hiding, but suffers from chest pain. Adam, who is naïve but well-educated, is sent for supplies and help, thus beginning his adventures.

Much of the humor in the film is derived from his being unaccustomed to the lifestyle of the present (such as using the term negro, and believing "shit" is a French compliment), believing "gay" means happy, and finding awe in simple things of the present. Early on, he meets Eve Vrustikoff (Alicia Silverstone) at a card store, where she works, and where he went to sell his father's classic baseball cards. She stops the store owner from ripping Adam off and is immediately fired. Adam asks Eve to take him to the Holiday Inn, in exchange for a baseball card, worth $4,000. The next morning, at the Holiday Inn, Eve comes to give back the card to Adam, and after a brief conversation, Eve informs Adam that she has to look for a new job. In exchange for $1,000 a week, Adam asks Eve to work for him, she agrees to help him buy the supplies and his search for a "non-mutant wife from Pasadena". Meanwhile, Adam meets Eve's gay housemate and best friend, Troy (Dave Foley), who offers advice and commentary as Adam and Eve fall in love.

Adam continually impresses both Eve and Troy with his array of talents including an energetic swing dance that garners the attention of Eve's rival, Sophie (Carmen Moré), who starts flirting with the naive Adam, spurning Eve when he goes home with her. Adam returns later, having admitted to rejecting Sophie's advances and tells Eve about his past. The sheer notion of the story scares Eve into thinking he is a sociopath or psychotic and delusional and she contacts a medical institution to have him committed, which he escapes. After Adam is gone, Troy and Eve find that he has "millions upon millions, upon millions of dollars" worth of stocks, and the lifestyle they find he has been living seems straight out of the 1960s. Eventually, Eve finds Adam and the two make up, Adam finally introducing Eve to his sheltered parents.

At the conclusion of the film, Calvin and Helen move into a home at the surface that their son has had constructed with the wealth he has acquired from selling stocks, which acquired great value from splits over the years. Only Calvin is informed that the catastrophe they went into seclusion for was in fact a plane crash, for fear Helen would be incredibly angry at her husband for her years of mistaken confinement. The film ends with Helen at peace with her newfound freedom from the shelter, Adam and Eve engaged to be married, while Calvin, certain that the "Commies" have faked the collapse of the Soviet Union, starts pacing out measurements for a new fallout shelter.

Cast

• Brendan Fraser as Adam Webber
• Alicia Silverstone as Eve Vrustikoff
• Christopher Walken as Calvin Webber
• Sissy Spacek as Helen Webber
• Dave Foley as Troy
• Joey Slotnick as Soda Jerk/"Archbishop" Melker
• Dale Raoul as Mom
• Rex Linn as Dave
• Cynthia Mace as Betty
• Harry S. Murphy as Bob
• Hugh Wilson as Levy
• Carmen Moré as Sophie
• Nathan Fillion as Cliff
• Jenifer Lewis as Dr. Nina Aron
• John F. Kennedy (uncredited, archive footage) as himself (reveals existence of Cuban missiles)
• Fidel Castro (uncredited, archive footage) as himself
• Nikita Khrushchev (uncredited, archive footage) as himself (shakes fist at the U.N.)

Reception

Critical reception

The film received mixed to positive reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film had an overall score of 59% of the comments positive. On Metacritic has a score of 48%. Roger Ebert gave the film 3 out of 4 stars saying "the movie is funny and entertaining in all the usual ways, yes, but I was grateful that it tried for more: that it was actually about something, that it had an original premise, that it used satire and irony and had sly undercurrents."

Box office

Blast from the Past opened in North American theaters on February 12, 1999 and took in $7,771,066 earning it 5th place at the box office for the weekend.

External links

• Blast from the Past at IMDb
• Blast from the Past at AllMovie
• Blast from the Past at Box Office Mojo
• Blast from the Past at Rotten Tomatoes