Kang Chen
Staff Writer
Review
It's always very interesting seeing how much worse the movie adaptation of a Michael Crichton novel is.
The old adage is the movie is never as good as the book, but directors and producers still zealously seek to bring Crichton's stories to the big screen, hoping to create the next blockbuster. To a large extent, they have been successful.
Jurassic Park was the mega-hit of 1993, and movies like Disclosure and Rising Sun were profitable ventures.
Having said all that, we should keep in mind that Crichton movies have flopped also. Does anybody remember Congo? Probably not, but if you do, you have my sympathies.
Sphere proved to be nearly as, if not equally, disappointing. It seems that the producers of the movie decided to rest on the name recognition of its stars to sell the movie.
Which might not be too bad of an idea. With heavyweights like Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson and Sharon Stone in the lineup, there are bound to be some people who will watch the movie thinking that such big stars simply wouldn't all be in a crappy movie.
Boy, are they in for a surprise. The flaws of the movie read like a laundry list of things not to do when making a film. The plot is convoluted. The pacing is bad. The movie rushes madly towards an ending that is far from satisfying. And it's being advertised as something it is not. Warner Bros. would have you believe Sphere is a horror film. When was the last time you saw a good horror movie rated PG-13?
The plot goes something like this: a massive, 300-year-old spaceship is found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Norman Goodman (Hoffman), a psychologist; Harry Adams (Jackson), a mathematician; Beth Halperin (Stone), a biochemist; and Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber) are all scientists who have been summoned to the middle of the Pacific so they can enter the alien craft and do some exploring.
The team members were chosen as a result of a report which Goodman had filed with the government some very many years ago. In the report, he chose this group of people because he felt they would best be able to handle an initial encounter with an alien life form.
The only problem is, the report was bogus. As Goodman tells Adams, he only wrote the report because he needed money, and he just wrote whatever came to his mind. To him, it was all a tremendous joke.
The joke very quickly turns awry. The team of explorers discovers that the craft is not alien at all, but human-made. They conclude that this must be a ship from the future. They then discover a huge, shimmering, golden globe within the spaceship.
That's when all the troubles begin. First, a Pacific storm forces the surface fleet to leave the explorers all alone in the underground habitat. A crew member dies. Then, an alien entity named Jerry begins to wreak havoc.
The plot goes through several more twists and more people die before a resolution is reached. But there is really no suspense because the plot flies by too quickly to really create any atmosphere.
The only redeeming quality about this movie is the acting. Hoffman and Jackson are great; their dry humor was duly appreciated by the audience. There are one-liners aplenty floating through Sphere. In fact, if you're going to watch this movie, that's what you should go for - the humor, not the horror.
But take it from me, you'll probably be better off waiting for the movie adaptation of E.R.
MPAA Rating:
PG-13
Running Time:
118 min
Playing At:
Local Theaters