We''ve seen Brendan Fraser play adorable and stupid characters such as in
George of the Jungle and
Dudley-do-Right,
and he is no different in
Blast From the Past, a movie about a man who was raised in a bomb shelter for thirty-five years and believed that the world had been destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. Fraser, at least in the first two thirds of the film, is a complete idiot, and then he mellows out. At first his excitement is genuine but after that you really start to believe that something is wrong with his head because he is so out of it. Of course, maybe that''s what someone who had never seen the sky before would look like.
Anyway, Blast from the Past fluctuates immensely. There are some mildly funny scenes throughout but the comedy basically dies in the later minutes of the film. When Fraser first comes into the world it is pretty entertaining. As far as the romance goes, Blast from the Past fails miserably. I used to really like Alicia Silverstone (namely Clueless) but have continued to lose faith in her. She doesn''t really do a bad job but she does nothing for me in this film, and the attraction between the two seems like something that could only be derived on paper - in this case, a screenplay. There is absolutely nothing new in the way of romance in the movie, so anyone, especially the women, looking for a romantic comedy will probably be disappointed.
But as a comedy, Blast from the Past still works. Even though Fraser''s character is overly stupid at times, he is funny in a charming, innocent way. Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek do a terrific job as his parents, Walken in particular who seems to like the bomb shelter more than the real world.