Blast From the Past (1999)

Blast From the Past (Hugh Wilson, 1999)
Walken plays: Calvin Weber - bunker-building inventor, Commie hater, and hot Dr. Pepper lover



Synopsis: Blast From the Past is a breezy, charming, accidentally profound story of joie-de-vivre in unfortunate circumstances... bookmarking the predictably dull slapstick romance the filmmaker set out to make. It's got a fairly engaging premise - life in a nuclear fallout bunker, and the process of re-integration into the outside world and culture shock therein after decades of isolation - which has been more recently played with to interesting effect by titles like The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (2015) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016). Naturally, writer/director Hugh Wilson (who also directed Brendan Fraser in the gloriously daft Dudley Do-Right [1999]) under-explores the heck out of the conceit here, using it to motivate endless sequences of Brendan Fraser's perennially chipper man-child to gawking at cleavage, splashing around in the ocean like a puppy, or yelping sentences like "Heather? I have NEVER heard that name before!" But even this is a monumental improvement over the dull, romantic comedy dross the film devolves into, pairing Fraser with the petulant Alicia Silverstone, who can't act her way out of a paper bag.



All things considered, this is wholeheartedly Walken's movie to save. Wilson seems to know this too, prolonging the prologue bunker sequence and giving us a far longer amount of time with Walken's wacky inventor and his stir-crazy, alcoholic wife (Sissy Spacek) raising baby-Fraser than we'd normally expect. This whole sequence feels like an entirely different movie: it's charming, wholesome, and hugely fun, and even flirts with a character study of family dynamics under the strain of confinement, largely thanks to the talented leads (Walken appears delighted with their quarantine, while Spacek increasingly frays). Like 10 Cloverfield Lane, the moral of the story seems to be that filmmakers should just stay in the bunker.

Wilson's also savvy enough to grant Walken all kinds of the wacky mischief we crave: apart from cheerily romping around his bunker, we get to see him prepare to deliver his wife's baby, let loose with mini-monologues in flawless German and Latin, and be increasingly frustrated at his son's inability to understand baseball. Once he emerges later on, he's propositioned by a drag queen while wearing a hazmat suit, is captivated by microwaves, and gives an impromptu sex-ed lesson to Brendan Fraser in a hysterical comedy cutaway. By the end of the film, he's a paranoid mess, muttering about Commies as he, for some reason, goose-steps across his new lawn as the camera heroically tracks out. He's measuring the property to build a new bunker you say, Wikipedia? Sure he is. Sure.

Calvin Weber. Inventor. Paranoiac. Amateur gynecologist.

Wacky Walken dialogue: For such an overall mediocre film, Blast From the Past is a treasure trove of Walken-isms. His nearly tearfully flustered recounting of his time on the surface has him describing 1990s folk as "a sub-species of mutants," which is stellar. Still, it's his opening joke which takes the cake: "A duck walks into a Pharmacy to buy some chapstick. Do you know what he says to the pharmacist? Put it on my bill." Comedy. Gold.



DOES HE DANCE: Oh yes - twice, actually! There's a more traditional waltz with Spacek when he butts in on her giving their son dancing lessons, but his little happy wiggle when he discovers the air above is clear of radiation is one for the ages.


Bunker boogie woogie

Overall Walken-o-meter: 9/10 cowbells. This is a perfect blend of Walken's shades of suave, exuberant and batshit with just a lil' darkness, without flying off the handle into self-parody. It's worth undertaking a fan edit, trimming out all of the extraneous surface Fraser/Silverstein rubbish, and partaking in a delightful little short film of Walken and Spacek hunkering down in a bunker. Preferably enjoy with a cup of hot Dr. Pepper.