Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Overlooked Movies: Innerspace

Here's the pitch: Fantastic Voyage meets All of Me.  Starring Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, and Meg Ryan, with some great character actors filling out the bill.  I've said several times that I thought Quaid would become a major star after certain movies.  This is another of them, but Martin Short also gives a great performance.  I thought he'd go on to stardom, too.  Didn't happen.  Maybe he never got the right role.  Meg Ryan is great, too, and she did become a big name, for a while, anyway.

What happens is that Quaid is reduced to microscopic size and put in a vehicle not unlike the one in Fantastic Voyage.  He's supposed to be injected into a bunny, but things happen and he winds up in Short.  There's a gang of master criminals.  There's a mcguffin (a computer chip).  There's pantomime and dancing (a great scene).  There are chases, escapes, and romance.  There's kissing, which is how Quaid winds up in Ryan for a while.  There's slapstick. There's more shrinkage.  There are two versions of "Twistin' the Night Away" (Sam Cooke and Rod Stewart).

Judy and I saw this in the theater and found it exhilarating.  The great final scene will put a smile on your face and a song in your heart.  Or maybe not.  You might be one of the curmudgeons who doesn't like this movie.  But I like it a lot.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

We saw it when it first came out too but I haven't seen it since. I did like it then, so no curmudgeon here.


Jeff

pattinase (abbott) said...

I remember this one and I liked it too. Hard to predict which actors will succeed. I thought Kevin Kline would be bigger too.

Unknown said...

So did I, Patti. He looks just like Errol Flynn in the new movie based on Flynn. Good makeup, I guess, but there's a physical resemblance already there.

Deb said...

Kevin Kline as Errol Flynn? That should be interesting!

I loved Innerspace and really thought it would shoot Quaid and Short to superstardom. Didn't happen--sadly. Well, what do I know? I'm the one who said in 1996, "a movie about the sinking of the Titanic? Who wants to see that? The movie's gonna sink faster than the ship!" My husband still likes to occasionally remind me of that bold prediction.

Deb said...

And as for poor Meg Ryan--she's had so much work done, her face is virtually unrecognizable these days. She and Melanie Griffin both need to sue their plastic surgeons!

Unknown said...

The Kevin Kline movie is THE LAST OF ROBIN HOOD. The trailer's on YouTube. I loved INNERSPACE, too. Quaid just wasn't destined for stardom, I guess.

Anonymous said...

Hey, Kevin Kline is an Oscar winner! And he's married to Phoebe Cates.

He's done OK for himself.


Jeff