Lost in Space (1998)

The Robinson family are due to blast off into deep space in order to prepare a new planet called "Alpha Prime" for colonisation and everyone else to ruin. However, not everyone is happy for them to leave on the mission and a number of attempts have been made to sabotage the mission. When all this fails it falls to an inside man, Dr. Smith, to reprogramme the ships robot to kill the crew whilst they lay in cryostasis.

However, Dr. Smith has been double crossed and is blasted off into space with the rest of the crew. With the reprogrammed robot on a rampage it is up to Doctor Smith to save the ship he tried to destroy. With the navigation system destroyed and the ship heavily damaged, the crew are awoken to find it on a collision course with the sun. They have no alternative but to engage the hyper-drive without the safety of the navigation system.

The picture quality of this DVD is superb, especially considering it was an early DVD, exhibiting rich and vibrant colours throughout the film. Although the picture is sharp it still has its minus points, especially when it shows up the computer animation. For some ridiculous reason an additional CGI character was added, and boy can you tell.

Sound is what you would expect. The dialogue is clear and precise in the centre channel even if some of the characters accents are a little hard to understand. However, this is no fault of the sound track. There's plenty of activity in the surround channels and they definitely make their presence known whenever the action the arrives.

The menu system is cleverly animated and scored and was one of the first DVDs on the market to use animated menus. It's a pity that the region two equivalent was such a static and boring affair as, boy, you really need something extra to make you want to buy this film.

Overall the film is total rubbish. Matt LeBlanc plays Joey Tribbiani (TV's Friends) and is totally impossible to be taken seriously. I mean if Matt wants to distance himself from the Joey character he's going to have to do much better than this. I was waiting for him to turn to Heather Graham and say "How You Doin'?". Incidentally, the gorgeous Ms. Graham is what pushes this film to become almost watchable, its unfortunate her performance is offset by the rest of the annoying cast.

Criticisms aside, there is still something that just about lifts this disc above the norm, and that's the extras. If ever a film needed a bunch of extras its this one, and it gets a truck load.