Blast from the Past

Directed by Hugh Wilson, Blast from the Past follows Christopher Walken’s eccentric Calvin Webber as he locks his wife (Sissy Spacek’s Helen) and young son in a fallout shelter after he becomes convinced that North America was blown up in a nuclear holocaust – with the movie picking up 35 years later and detailing the exploits of Calvin and Helen’s raised-in-the-shelter son (Brendan Fraser’s Adam). It’s an irresistible premise that’s generally employed to entertaining (if somewhat erratic) effect by Wilson, as the filmmaker, working from a script written with Bill Kelly, does a superb job of establishing the uniformly affable characters and peppering the proceedings with a handful of can’t-miss situations and scenarios – with, especially, the initial emphasis on Adam’s fish-out-of-water exploits in current-day Los Angeles certainly as entertaining and comedically-tinged as one might’ve hoped. There’s little doubt, as well, that Blast from the Past benefits rather substantially from Fraser’s often astonishingly compelling and charismatic turn as the naive central character, and it’s clear, too, that Wilson wrings strong work from an offbeat supporting cast that includes Joey Slotnick, Dave Foley, and Nathan Fillion. The agreeable atmosphere takes a fairly pronounced hit as the picture progresses into its protracted and needlessly melodramatic third act – it’s difficult, ultimately, to justify the sequence in which a character attempts to have Fraser’s Adam committed, for example – and yet the feel-good conclusion ultimately compensates for such missteps and does, in the end, ensure that Blast from the Past concludes on a palpably positive note.

*** out of ****