Blast From The Past

As Seen On TV

The title for the film makes me think of annoying radio DJs, prattling away to themselves with their inane chatter, who announce the next song from the '60s or '70s as a 'blast from the past', as if that gives them free reign to play songs from when they were kids. It's this sort of supposedly innocent, but actually damaging, nostalgia that this film aims for, when all it reminds me of is Margaret Thatcher trying to get us in the UK back to Victorian values. And look what that did.

A crazy scientist dad (Walken) and his dedicated but unquestioning wife (Spacek) lock themselves in a fallout shelter in 1962 when they think the atomic bomb has landed. They raise their son, Adam, (Fraser) to have '60s values so, when the lock on the fallout shelter opens 35 years later, we have the comedy of a fish out of water, as well as comparing the '60s with the '90s. There is some charm in this vein, with Fraser just right as the man out of time, with lines like, "Look, a Negro!", but this is mostly amusing instead of very funny.

As this is a romantic comedy, Adam must meet a girl, in this case Eve, (Silverstone), very much a '90s LA girl, who eventually falls for his manners, politeness, old-fashioned values, and probably because he's not at all ugly. (Although I've never really got why Fraser is handsome; he's definitely not repulsive, he's tall and in good shape, but his face always seems to have an air of slight bemusement, which is appropriate for somebody with quite an excellent comedic touch. In comparison, Silverstone is more obviously attractive, even though her hair in this film is all over the place, and has to wear short skirts all the time to show off her very shapely legs to detract you from the way her lips seem to oscillate on their own frequency whenever she speaks, so I suppose they balance out, and are in the same half of the league table for each other.)

The film tries to contrast the '60s with the '90s by showing how horrible things have become, and says how nice it would be to be polite and pleasant and know how to dance, without mentioning such negatives as the obscene racism that existed in America at the time, or the anti-communist attitudes that led McCarthy to hold such power in the previous decade. Or perhaps I'm reading too much into things, as can happen from time to time. Nonetheless, the film ends shambolically, which might have left the slightly sour taste in the mouth, with everything wrapping up in a muddled last ten minutes, which needs a Silverstone voiceover to explain to us how things got worked out for the happy couple, as well as for the parents who were still in the fallout shelter (the very underused Walken & Spacek). A sweet little film, but mostly forgotten by the next day.

Rating: DA