Blast from the Past (film)
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| Blast from the Past | |
|---|---|
 cinematic poster |
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| Directed by | Hugh Wilson |
| Produced by | Sunil Perkash Claire Rudnick Polstein Amanda Stern |
| Written by | Bill Kelly Hugh Wilson |
| Starring | Brendan Fraser Alicia Silverstone Christopher Walken Sissy Spacek Dave Foley Joey Slotnick |
| Music by | Steve Dorff |
| Cinematography | José Luis Alcaine |
| Editing by | Don Brochu |
| Distributed by | New Line Cinema |
| Release date(s) | January 27, 1999 |
| Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Blast from the Past is a 1999 romantic comedy film starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Sissy Spacek, Christopher Walken, and Dave Foley.
Taglines:
- She was a woman of the world. He had never been around the block.
- She'd never met anyone like him. He's never met anyone... Period.
- After 35 years in a bomb shelter, Adam Webber is finally going outside to play.
[edit] Plot outline
Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) is a brilliant, eccentric, and paranoid Caltech nuclear physicist (see mad scientist), living the stereotypical happy 1960s life during the Cold War. His extreme fear of a nuclear holocaust leads him to build an enormous self-sustaining fallout shelter beneath his suburban San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles home. One night, while he and his pregnant wife, Helen, are entertaining guests, when a family friend comes to inform him that John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev are getting into a debate, they turn on their television, and watch in horror. When the Cuban Missile Crisis begins, they order their guests to leave, and they head down into the shelter. Meanwhile, a USAF pilot has engine problems with his F-86 Sabre; he is ordered to eject, believing his jet will crash into the Pacific Ocean. Instead, the plane crashes into the Webber household home, leaving their friends and family to believe the family has died, and the family to believe the unthinkable has happened and that they are the sole survivors of a nuclear war. Suddenly, Mrs. Webber goes into labor, and gives birth to a baby boy, who they name Adam (for quite obvious reasons). During the roughly 35 years they are down in the shelter, the world above drastically changes, while the Webber's life remains in the 1960 era. Adam is taught in several languages, all school subjects, and other things, such as dance, boxing, and many other things. Adam is given his father's baseball card collection, and shares in IBM, and AT&T. The father finally emerges in 1997, where he finds himself in the ghetto. He mistakes this for a post-apocalyptic world and wants his wife and grown son (Fraser) to stay in hiding, but suffers from heart pains. Adam, who is naïve but well-educated, is sent for supplies and help, thus beginning his adventures. Much of the humor in the film is derived from his being unaccustomed to the lifestyle of the present (such as using the term negro, and believing shit is a French compliment), and relying on outdated methods, finding awe in simple things of modernity. He eventually meets Eve (Silverstone) after trying to sell his father's classic baseball cards, but she stops him from being cheated. Later, she helps him with the supplies and his search for a "non-mutant" wife from Pasadena, while Eve's homosexual roommate (Dave Foley) offers commentary as Adam and Eve fall in love in the process. Eventually, Adam's father and mother move into a home at the surface that their son has had constructed with the wealth he has acquired from selling bonds worth great value owing to their antiquity. Only his father is informed that the catastrophe they went into seclusion for was in fact a plane crash, for fear his mother would be rendered in a fragile state (incredibly angry at her husband for her years of mistaken confinement) as she yearns for freedom. The film finishes with Adam's parents at peace with their newfound freedom from containment (although the father ponders the physical implications of the accident in their new home's backyard) and Adam and Eve finding their love in one another, while Calvin starts measuring a new fallout shelter.
[edit] Trivia and Goofs
- The name of Adam and his girlfriend Eve are a play on Adam and Eve.
- Adam had 10,000 shares each of stock in IBM, Polaroid, and AT&T all purchased in 1958 or 1959. With dividend reinvestment, the IBM stock alone would be worth over $169 million in November of 1997, when Adam left the fallout shelter. (IBM Investor Relations, Yahoo Finance)
- The license plate on Eve's Geo Metro changed in different scenes.
- As Calvin turns on the projector connected to the TV set, we begin to see a backwards "6" from the familiar "Academy Leader" countdown; but the next number, a backwards "5" is from a modern countdown leader used by Digital Media Corp.
- At the swing bar, Adam and Eve's drinks keep switching sides on the table.
- After the screen reads "Fall 1991" the scene is set in a bar. In the background, a young boy can been seen playing a Primal Rage arcade console. Primal Rage was not released until 1994.
- When Adam is one year old, his mother walks to the service elevator with him to show his father that he can stand up "All by himself". He is picked up by Calvin and doesn't actually stand alone. Also, his mother is heard saying, "Come on, you can do it" but her mouth does not move.
- After Wolf 1 ejects from his fighter plane, we see the stick thrown right, but the plane banks and turns to the left.
