It's Time For A Charming Romantic-Comedy With Blast From The Past

When the nuclear apocalypse comes (and considering Trump's daily tantrums, that may come sooner rather than later), we shall gather around fires and tell tales of the past, before the world came crashing around all of us. It'll be like that scene in Reign Of Fire where Christian Bale and Gerard Butler retell the Star Wars movies to a new group of youngsters in order to spark their imaginations and keep the power of stories alive. Yarns shall be spun and one such tale that shall be passed onto the post-apocalyptic denizens of the future will be the legend of leading man Brendan Fraser, who, for some reason, got abandoned by Hollywood in the 2010's despite showing some very clear talent as a leading man.

Now, Brendan Fraser is a slightly unusual leading man admittedly, feeling more like a precursor to hunky goofball Chris Pratt than the second coming of typical leading men like Harrison Ford or Humphrey Bogart in the way he embraced zaniness instead of drama and had no problem being the butt of jokes delivered by stop-motion monkeys or Looney Tunes characters. Not all the movies he was in were all that good (Monkeybone was an outright mess) but he was always interesting in them for sure thanks to his commitment to either playing against or fully embodying the absurd and I do miss his presence as a leading man in modern Hollywood fare since he brought a more unique presence to his roles compared to, I dunno, Jai Courtney or whatever generic white guy Hollywood wants to turn into the next big thing next week.

For proof of Brendan Fraser's chops as a leading man, look no further than the 1999 Hugh Wilson romantic comedy Blast From The Past, a lovely little confection of a movie that gets a lot of mileage out of a charming lead performance and an earnest atmosphere. The high-concept premise the entire movie hinges on is that a married couple (Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek) duck into a fall-out shelter in 1962 when they mistakenly think the nuclear apocalypse has occurred. They seal the exits and program them not to open for another 35 years. While down in the fall-out shelter, they give birth to and raise a child named Adam (Brendan Fraser), whose oh so excited to see the world outside of his fall out shelter.

In 1997, Adam emerges from the shelter in order to obtain direly needed supplies for his sickly father, which means traveling into a world much different from the one that existed in 1962. In order to get accomplish his task, Adam recruits the help of Eve (Alicia Silverstone), a no-nonsense gal whose as cynical with the world around her as Adam is fully excited about every aspect of modern society he encounters. Might sparks just fly between the two? Well, far be it from me to drop massive spoilers in a movie review, but let's say the two do have a "blast" in their time together....(Man, why didn't New Line Cinema hire me to write the plot summary on the back of the DVD for this movie??) 

There's an air of sweetness throughout Blast From The Past that turns out to be one of the movie's best assets as it's nice to see Adam's ignorance of the world around him being used for jokes that center around his naivety clashing with a cynical late-20th century world instead of utilizing his absence of knowledge of the real world to make him a character who obliviously tosses out shallow mean-spirited jokes or anything like that (though the film does get a requisite "How would a guy from the 1960's react to a non-white person" gag right out of the way and it's....painless, I guess?). Really, Blast From The Past mostly doesn't have a mean-spirited bone in its body, more often than not channeling the "Aw shucks!" spirit of a light-hearted family movie instead of, say, Happy Madison movies.

That's absolutely the right tonal approach to take with this concept and it allows for some oddly sweet moments like Adam being so excited to see the sky or acting downright giddy at experiencing the ocean for the first time. Blast From The Past has its share of overly obvious gags stemming from Adam's more naive conditioning (that's a notable reason why the movies more charming than outright hilarious) but I'd wager it has an even greater share of good-natured moments involving Adam coming to terms with its surroundings that make strong use of Brendan Fraser's great lead performance, with Fraser lending the character a likeable air and the actors trademark style of being able to interact with the most stylized situation possible in a comfortable and natural way. The unusual is something Fraser has no problem interacting with and even excelling against and that makes him a perfect choice to play Adam.

Playing against him is Alicia Silverstone as Eve and thankfully the two have solid chemistry together (boy, is that ever a crapshoot in romantic comedies). Once the third act rolls around and Eve discovers the truth about Adam being stuck in a fallout shelter for so long, she goes back and forth too much in terms of how much she actually believes Adam, but otherwise, she works fine as a female lead for the project, and like I said, she and Fraser bounce off each other in a cute way (Silverstone has plenty of great moments of disbelief in reacting to Adam's shenanigans) that makes their blossoming romance fun to watch. It isn't a romantic-comedy game-changer or anything like that, but the super pleasing Blast For The Past has plenty of qualities that are indeed enjoyable and charming to see unfold, many of them being owed to the film's smart idea to play things in a lighter frizzy manner that is quite endearing.