½ Lost in Space
(PG-13)Based on the old TV series Lost in Space. The movie is rather more serious than the series, though still somewhat amusing, I guess. Earth has nearly used up its resources, so all the nations have started working together, and a mission has been planned to send a sleeper ship to a distant star system, to build a hyperspace gate, while a gate is being built near Earth. Then ships would be able to travel instantaneously between star systems, and colonize the new world. The mission is led by a scientist named Prof. John Robinson (William Hurt), who will be going along with his family: his wife, Dr. Maureen Robinson (Mimi Rogers), daughters, Dr. Judy Robinson (Heather Graham) and Penny (Lacy Chabert), and son Will. Judy, like her father, mostly concentrates on her work; Penny is mainly upset to be leaving behind her whole world; and Will is upset that his dad never has time for him, and doesn't pay attention to his science projects.
There are terrorists called the Sedition, who hired a doctor, Zachary Smith (Gary Oldman), who was involved in the mission, to sabotage it. First this involved killing the mission's pilot, but when he was replaced with Major Don West (Matt LeBlanc), Smith was sent to reprogram the mission's robot to destroy the Robinson family and the ship. However, his employers double-crossed him, so he was stuck on the doomed ship, the Jupiter. So he ended up reviving the Robinsons from cryostasis to help deactivate the robot and fix the ship. However, because of damage to navigation systems, the ship is off course and headed into the sun, so they take the drastic step of engaging the hyperdrive, which is unpredictable....
They wind up in an unfamiliar system, where they coincidentally find a ship that had been sent out to find them. Apparently, they were in the future. And they were attacked by robotic spiders. And um... well eventually they went down to the planet... and... I dunno. It's weird. There's a bubble of some sort, and some of them went in... and found a grown-up Will, who had built like a time portal, which one person could go through, into the past. I don't really know what else to say, it's all rather weird. I could barely comprehend it, let alone explain it. It's really not that good, but I suppose it's enjoyable enough, if you don't mind that it doesn't make much sense....