Blast from the Past (film)
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| Blast from the Past | |
|---|---|
 cinematic poster |
|
| 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 |
| Allmovie profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Blast from the Past is a 1998 romantic comedy film starring Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Sissy Spacek, Christopher Walken, and Dave Foley.
[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 ask 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. Just as they descend into the shelter, the plane veers off and crashes into the Webber household home, leaving their friends and family to believe the family has died, and the family, having seen the resulting fireball just as they lock themselves in their shelter, believing that the unthinkable has happened and that they are the sole survivors of a nuclear war. The locks on the shelter are set for 35 years and cannot be overridden by anyone inside or outside the shelter - for "their own protection" according to Calvin Webber.
A few days after the locks have been engaged, Mrs. Webber goes into labor, and gives birth to a baby boy, who they name Adam. During the roughly 35 years they are down in the shelter, the world above drastically changes, while the Webber's life remains frozen in 1962. Adam is taught in several languages, all school subjects, dance, boxing, and many other things. Adam is given his father's baseball card collection, and shares in IBM, and AT&T.
In 1998 the timer on the locks release, and Webber Sr. decides to check out the surroundings above the shelter, which has turned into a 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), believing "gay" means happy, and finding awe in simple things of modernity. Early on, he meets Eve Rustikoff at a card store, where she works, and where he went to sell his father's classic baseball cards. She stops the store owner from ripping Adam off and is immediately fired. In exchange for a few of his cards, she agrees to help him with the supplies and his search for a "non-mutant" wife from Pasadena. Meanwhile, Adam meets Eve's homosexual roommate (Dave Foley), who offers advice and commentary as Adam and Eve fall in love.
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 stocks, which acquired great value from splits over the years. 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 incredibly angry at her husband for her years of mistaken confinement. The film finishes with Adam's mother at peace with her newfound freedom from the shelter, Adam and Eve engaged to be married, while Calvin, certain that the "Commies" have faked the collapse of the Soviet Union, starts measuring for a new fallout shelter.
