February 11–18, 1999

movie shorts

Blast from the Past

Directed by Hugh Wilson
A New Line Cinema release

by Sam Adams

Blast from the Past marks the return of another member of the "Remember me?" club: Alicia Silverstone, who hasn't been seen on the big screen since Batman and Robin and Excess Baggage bit their respective big ones in the summer of 1997. Watching Blast, it seems as if another extended sojourn might be in order.

It's hard to remember the last time I saw anyone look as awkward in front of a camera as Silverstone does here; in close-up, she looks as if she might turn and run for cover any minute. Done up in ringlets and bad-girl attire, Silverstone plays Eve Rustikov, the worldly-wise chick who teaches bomb-shelter baby Adam Webber (Brendan Fraser) a thing or two about life in the '90s. (Check those first names for an index of the movie's subtlety factor.) His parents (a too-coy Christopher Walken and an arm-flapping Sissy Spacek) having sealed themselves in a fallout shelter during the Bay of Pigs, Adam emerges into present-day L.A. with your standard catalog of goggle-eyed, fish-out-of-water reactions. Oh my gosh: rap music, transsexuals, porno!

Fraser, a nonactor whose future seems to be as a highly paid body double, works the naïf thing hard, but only succeeds in seeming doltish, and not even the presence of ex-Kid in the Hall Dave Foley as Eve's gay friend can inject any mirth into the stillborn proceedings. Still, Silverstone takes the Queasy Cup, looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else. That makes two of us.