LOST IN SPACE gets lost in the first five sensory-numbing minutes and stays missing for its remaining 125, including the credit crawl at the end which purportedly lists 3,500 individuals and seems to last longer than the original 1965-68 TV series. Early on, one character utters a self-own for the whole project with “There must be a way to get thru this.” Undemanding kids would accept the flashbang—as they/we did the 83 goofy small screen episodes back when LBJ was President—but anyone older than a 5th or 6th grader will feel their patience assaulted, intelligence insulted and nostalgia reserves cheated. *

2058 (good luck getting there). The ‘United Global Space Force’ sends the ‘Jupiter II’ on a desperate mission to finish building a hypergate so that the pollution ravaged population of Earth can flee to the planet ‘Alpha Prime’. In charge is brilliant and driven professor ‘John Robinson’ (William Hurt), with hotshot fighter jockey ‘Don West’ (Matt LeBlanc) at the throttle. Robinson’s family goes along: logical and loving wife ‘Maureen’ (Mimi Rogers), also a professor; adult daughter and doctor ‘Judy’ (Heather Graham); rebellious teen daughter ‘Penny’ (Lacey Chabert)’ and young son ‘Will’ (Jack Johnson), boy genius & inventor. Stowing away on the flight is ‘Dr. Zachary Smith’ (Gary Oldman), a subversive working for a terrorist group. Smith’s monkeying with the ship’s massive Robot manages to send them hyperdrive slamming thru the Sun (sure) and into deep black uncharted areas of somewhere far, far away.

Those countless digitizers in the enervating list (‘credit crawl’ is right) at least tried to accomplish something—credit production designer Norman Garwood (Brazil, Hook, Glory) with overseeing impressive sets for the interior of Jupiter II—but all director Stephen Hopkins and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman achieve is hanging out a banner that announces Mission Unaccomplished. Was Lost In Space as bad as the same year’s Godzilla? Tough call.

Goldsman’s resume includes winners like A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man and I Am Legend but this one is truly terrible, as fragmented as the Asteroid Belt. The dialogue is awful, ditto the characterizations, the charm from the TV ancestor replaced by leaden attempts at seriousness and scares that aren’t thrilling, just nasty. His parents were both clinical child psychologists, which may account for the lightness-darkening subplot of dad John ignoring Will; the threats and ultimate viciousness of Smith are tasteless. Toss in an idiotic ‘aw, cute’ creature given the insipid name ‘Blarp’ (‘Barf’ is more like it); instead of cuddling the first instinct is choking. Hopkins previous assignment was the greatly underrated African adventure The Ghost And The Darkness but he really muffed this voyage; along with ordinarily sharp editor Ray Lovejoy (2001: A Space Odyssey, Aliens) his handling of the action is mostly a jarring jumble of noise, things blowing up, cut so MTV quick you can’t appreciate what’s happening, or care at all. The effects are variable, from good to downright cheesy. Uh, and what’s with the ladies spacesuits that take ‘form-fitting’ to breastworks levels. Just sayin’…

Matt’s expression speaks galaxies: this critter is as killable as Jar-Jar Binks

“Danger!” The performances are regrettable. One-note Hurt and bland Rogers don’t convince worth beans. LeBlanc’s cockiness comes off as a sleazy. Graham, fresh from Boogie Nights, looks lost (she was Hopkins girlfriend at the time). Chabert, meant to be humorous is instead repellent. And squeaky-voiced Johnson is pathetic—sorry, kids, we call ’em as we smell ’em. Oldman is a dead loss as Smith, playing the character with no trace of wit, the pompous flamboyance of Jonathan Harris from the 60s replaced by cold venom of the 90s. There are cameos from vets of the series: June Lockhart, 72, and Mark Goddard, 61, get brief exposure, Angela Cartwright, 45, and Marta Kristen, 52, zip past so fast they may as well not be there.  Dick Tufeld reprised his old TV job as the voice of the Robot. Guy Williams had passed away in 1989, gone too soon at 65. Bill Mumy, 43, opted out. Harris, who was 82 when it was being made, stayed in character by imperiously declining a cameo with  “I will have you know I have never done a walk-on or bit part in my life! And I do not intend to start.” **

From Angela Cartwright to In-your-face Miss Wrong

Reviews were overwhelmingly negative. Budgeted $80-90,000,000 with an accompanying whale-sized advertising blitz, it was a wash-out financially, taking just $69,118,000 domestically and $67,000,000 elsewhere.At the end, Bruce Broughton’s score pays homage to the old series by including a bit of the original’s theme music. Composed by John (at the time Johnny) Williams, it’s down below for a bit of ‘remember this?’ Also in the cast, briefly, are Jared Harris (as grownup Will), Edward Fox and Lennie James. ***

*—-Abort! Will Robinson! Abort!—going back to the low-budget matinees of the 50s, the list of dopey sci-fi movies could span from here to Pluto. It helps if dumbness is amusing. Those archaic wankers can usually chalk it up to naivete and bargain basement budgets. The lame modern era affairs can be pretentious and mean while lavishly throwing around money like the Pentagon. Some that were some that were/are roundly panned didn’t deserve it (Red Planet and Jupiter Ascending come to mind), others asked for and got living infamy—Battlefield Earth, anyone? No-one? In 1998 the showy but silly Armageddon was a huge hit as was the much better, adult-oriented and thoughtful Deep Impact but Star Trek: Insurrection, Sphere and Soldier didn’t light many imaginations let alone fire retros under receipts. And, other than its effective ad-campaign, Godzilla was an insult to giant radioactive lizards. The year also wtnessed another fondly recalled series keelhauled as a movie: The Avengers drew even more hisses and lost more dough than Lost In Space.

**—Wednesdays, CBS, 7:30pm—on the creepy heels of The Outer Limits and just before the musings of Star Trek, canny producer Irwin Allen launched the family-friendly adventures of Lost In Space in the Fall of 1965 (flanked by his Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and The Time Tunnel, trailed by Land Of The Giants). The show had audience appeal built-in. Kids of the day knew Guy Williams coolness from Zorro and June Lockhart’s comforting aura from Lassie. At 11, Bill Mumy was a fave child actor of the day and many of us had already had a crush on Angela Cartwright, 13, from seven seasons of The Danny Thomas Show. Norwegian, blond and 20, Marta Kristen’s welcome aboard was obvious. Mark Goddard, 29, was familiar from the series The Detectives. The kicker was Jonathan Harris, 41, who’d done a lot of TV but exploded into fame as Dr. Smith. Harris’s marvelously calibrated playing of the outlandish villain was a tickler for parents who were watching the show along with their kids. The moviemakers screwed the fun factor, and grownup Boomers who thought a big-screen redo would be a kick were let down by that absent joy and almost every other element in the flick, a bloated, bludgeoning bore.

*** —bravely go—the basic idea being sound—dating back to Swiss Family Robinson—there was a second TV series that, like the first, ran three years, 2018-21. Your spaced-out scribe hasn’t seen it, but have been told by other star voyagers that it’s pretty good. That one does have Parker Posey, which is “Launch” as far as we’re concerned, and it would have to be better than the movie, which is dumb enough to have inspired the joke known as the the U.S. Space Force, inaugurated by some abject moron in 2019.