Semi-Official Synopsis
Jack Putter is a 25-hour-a-day hypochondriac. His life is full of stress and he is in desperate need for a vacation. Sadly, things get stalled when Jack gets injected with an unknown chemical by a dying doctor in a mall and poor Jack starts hearing things — mainly the voice of man. The voice he is hearing is hotshot Navy pilot Tuck Pendleton, subject of a secret miniaturization project gone awry. Jack and Tuck have to work together to formulate an escape plan before Tuck runs out of oxygen, or before Jack gets killed by a competing organization trying to replicate the secret project.
Somewhere in the mid-to-late 80s, Joe Dante became a household name with entertaining films like Gremlins, Explorers and The Howling. While the latter certainly was a horror film, one which still gives me nightmares to this day, the rest had a tinge of suspense/horror, but mostly were geared towards, if not borderline, family films. Dante always did enough to make the situations in his stories uncomfortable, but always had a knack for pulling his viewers back from a tense edge with humor and memorable characters.
Interspace falls into that middle-ground category.
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The first act starts with our introduction to Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid), who is drunk and rowdy at a celebration dinner with some military ‘friends’. Clearly showing that he has reached the end of his career rope, with both career and with his loyal lover, Lydia (Meg Ryan), he prepares himself for a possible self-destructive new adventure that might be his last if something goes wrong. He plans to get shrunk down and injected into a bunny named ‘Bugs’ (WB, c’mon). This might lead to better medical possibilities and cures for ailments that are currently tough to get rid of in the human body. In short, a good deed, but risky.
Opposite of Tuck, far less manly, yet far more entertaining during his onscreen moments, is Jack Putter (Martin Short). He is introduced through a nervous dream sequence, where he screws up as a grocery clerk and is disposed of by an old redhead packing some heat. His nervousness and thick hypochondriac lifestyle plays a perfect, though predictable compliment to Tuck’s character. How the two meet is where act one ends and act two begins.
Joe Dante’s talent for creating his characters and giving them some solid depth in a short amount of time has always been a trademark through his filmography. He did this sort of thing with his players in Gremlins, even the creatures themselves, and he does it with Tuck and Jack in Innerspace. Our introduction and understanding of the characters is done within a 10-15 minute timespan in the first act. We know where Tuck lies in life through his actions, though his dialogue supports it here and there. We firmly know where Jack is coming from and what type of character to expect from him when his road intersects with Tuck’s. It takes a special type of director and some great writers (Chip Proser/Jeffrey Boam) to get characters built quickly, so that the story can shift right to the action. Both characters are well defined before the insanity begins. A lot of filmmakers can’t do that these days.
The second act of the film begins with Tuck’s injection into Jack’s butt (as silly as that sounds) after Tuck’s miniaturization process is interrupted by a competing group of money hungry antagonist, who try to literally kill the scientific staff overseeing the project — sans one doctor. Bleeding and dying, the doctor heading up the project barely makes it to Jack before passing away due to a gunshot wound. This is where the fun and beef of the movie truly begins.
Throughout the entire second act of the film, Jack and Tuck are on the run from the people trying to retrieve Tuck from Jack. They manage to track down Jack, thanks to a cold-hearted killer named Mr. Igoe (Vernon Wells), no matter where he tries to run. Granted this is the part of the movie, which is entertaining because Dante keeps the edits quick and the action high, that seems to ignore proper connections and exposition on how Igoe and his crew track down Jack from point to point. It’s a bit flaky and Dante seems to not care one bit about building the proper bridge from action sequence to action sequence. His focus seems to be in bed with getting the most comedy out of Martin Short (who delivers), pushing as much action/intensity into it to satisfy the badass-ness onscreen in large chunks, and perfecting the immersion of believability through special effects (which won the film an Academy Award — deservedly so for an 80s film named called Star Wars). I can dig this and it works for the decade it resides in, as most 80s films were short on substance and heavy on entertainment value (action, special effects, wacky characters). As a critic, I have to knock the film down a few pegs because it truly doesn’t concentrate enough on developing solid connections between plot points. Again, it’s entertaining, just short on beef in its burrito.
As Jack and Tuck go through a series of different action-oriented situations, and close calls, the movie spirals towards its conclusion, which is a bit tense. I will say that the writing does justice to the characters involved. While it certainly didn’t take care of the outer bits of the story and smoothing that out, the writing does take care of character development, especially when it comes to Martin Short’s Jack Putter — that goes a long way when a film needs to be memorable. Jack’s transition from spaz to hero is fun to watch, especially when the movie shows you the end result of that development. It does help that Martin Short is a talented actor/comedian, especially on the physical side of things, but the writing mostly helped to guide him along with his character.
At the end of the day Innerspace holds itself together enough to be nothing more or less than an entertaining 80s film that never apologies for its flaws. The bread and butter to the film is the special effects and they’re still impressive, regardless of the nearly 30 year graphical improvement gap in between. Anyway, come for the fun, ignore the hiccups and take this Joe Dante film for what it is — dumb, reckless entertainment.
On the HD transfer side of things, this Blu-ray was pretty darn good. While I have certainly seen better from Warner Home Video when it comes to transferring an old film to the Blu-ray format, there are more pros than cons. There are a few scenes in the film, especially during some of the chase scenes, where you get a bit of graininess in the darker part of the shots. It’s not an enormous Fox amount of graininess, but it’s there. That said, the majority of the transfer is well done. Warner did a very good job in taking a classic Dante adventure and making it as shiny and new as it possibly could. Even the special effects scenes translate well through the transfer.
On the special features side of things, here’s what you’re looking at:
– Commentary (Joe Dante, Michael Finnell, Kevin McCarthy, Robert Picardo, and Dennis Muren)
– Trailer
Not much here, but the price and nostalgia should be enough to warrant the purchase.
