Remember That Movie: Innerspace
I’ll just come right out and say it: the funniest movie I’ve seen in 2010 is not from this year. It is from 1987 and the movie is Innerspace.
Innerspace stars Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, Henry Gibson, Kevin McCarthy, and Robert Picardo and is directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling, The Explorers). It is a sci-fi comedy featuring Quaid as drunken charmer Tuck Pendleton, an astronaut who signs up for a secret miniaturization experiment. The plan is for Tuck to be shrunken to microscopic size while in a pod and injected into a rabbit, at which point he’d run a few tests regarding the technology of the pod and the biology of the animal. However, just as Tuck is miniaturized, a terrorist group storms the lab, looking to obtain the miniaturized pod and the experiment’s necessary tech. Why? It’s explained that Kevin McCarthy - starring as Victor Scrimshaw, a wealthy villain straight out of a cheesy Bond film - wants to sell the miniaturization tech to the highest-bidding nation.
It is here that I must pause for a moment. I want you to imagine: you’re a nervy, spastic person who’s having terrible nightmares about an old redheaded lady pulling a gun on you at the supermarket. You’ve seen your doctor so many times that he considers you his biggest financial asset. He recommends you take a relaxing vacation. All you want to do is get away to someplace with zero excitement. But as you’re leaving the mall, somebody suddenly injects you with something before dying at your feet - and the next thing you know, your eye feels like its been stabbed with a needle and you hear a voice in your head trying to strike up a conversation. To top it off, somebody is trying to kill you!
Meet Jack Putter, played by Martin Short in only his second film (Three Amigos! was his first). Short provides Innerspace with its biggest laughs, using his talent for neurotic, pratfall-prone physical comedy in what may be the best performance of his career. Putter unwittingly becomes the host of Pendleton’s oblivious speck, which is what throws him into an exciting and relentless adventure with car chases, stakeouts, an escape from a mobile meat locker, run-ins with an assassin that can kill by literally pointing at you - and love. This is not exactly a cruise in the Bahamas, but Putter becomes a better man because of it, which is fun to watch.
Meg Ryan is Pendleton’s investigative reporter girlfriend (back when reporters actually did more than report what was spoon-fed to them). She gets roped into helping the hapless Putter, while inside him floats the man who broke her heart one too many times. It just so happens she’s also tailing an international tech dealer called The Cowboy, played with extra cheese by Robert Picardo. Ryan could’ve been nothing more than The Girlfriend, but being the object of Pendleton and Putter’s affections, she becomes the heart of the movie. In part, through her presence, the characters and the audience learn the real excitement is not the cool action and villains but what is inside us, both literally and figuratively.
That gets to what is one of the most impressive things about Innerspace: the special effects. This may make me a product of the ‘90s CGI boom, but I’m not sure how effects like those in this movie were done without a computer. Much of the film takes place inside Putter’s body, showing us everything from the back of his eyeball to his pumping heart to the inside of his stomach. None of it looks dated and all of it still looks incredible. When Pendleton is at risk of being pumped into Putter’s heart, thereby possibly causing cardiac arrest, we believe the danger and are fully engaged because it looks like we are really inside Martin Short, watching this pod desperately hang on. And don’t even get me started on Putter’s grotesque, yet hilarious face spasms halfway through the movie!
The effects aren’t the only thing that makes Innerspace work. The performances – with Martin Short’s physical comedy and his chemistry with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan – really help make this more than an ‘effects film’. It has a lot of humor, but also a warmth that makes us care about what’s happening.
It’s also worth noting that director Joe Dante knows a thing or two about pacing. He’s not concerned with cutting to the chase; he builds his characters and he builds up the experiment without explicitly telling the audience ahead of time what it is. Dante allows us to catch our breath, have fun, and only includes action that is relevant to moving the story along.
Dante is the director of The Howling, both Gremlins movies, The Explorers, and The ‘burbs. He seems to be having fun here by throwing in actors from his previous movies (Robert Picardo and Kevin McCarthy), his cinematographer John Hora (as Ozzie Wexler), Australian baddie Vernon Wells, and Fiona Lewis, who worked for over 20 years before Innerspace, but has curiously failed to make another film since.
Innerspace isn’t a perfect sci-fi comedy. It sometimes defies logic and consistency, but that never gets in the way of the comedy and fun. If you don’t remember this movie or have never heard of it then I highly recommend hunting it down. I laughed a lot!
7/10
Should you see it? Rent
Innerspace is available on DVD.
Innerspace stars Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, Martin Short, Henry Gibson, Kevin McCarthy, and Robert Picardo and is directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, The Howling, The Explorers). It is a sci-fi comedy featuring Quaid as drunken charmer Tuck Pendleton, an astronaut who signs up for a secret miniaturization experiment. The plan is for Tuck to be shrunken to microscopic size while in a pod and injected into a rabbit, at which point he’d run a few tests regarding the technology of the pod and the biology of the animal. However, just as Tuck is miniaturized, a terrorist group storms the lab, looking to obtain the miniaturized pod and the experiment’s necessary tech. Why? It’s explained that Kevin McCarthy - starring as Victor Scrimshaw, a wealthy villain straight out of a cheesy Bond film - wants to sell the miniaturization tech to the highest-bidding nation.
It is here that I must pause for a moment. I want you to imagine: you’re a nervy, spastic person who’s having terrible nightmares about an old redheaded lady pulling a gun on you at the supermarket. You’ve seen your doctor so many times that he considers you his biggest financial asset. He recommends you take a relaxing vacation. All you want to do is get away to someplace with zero excitement. But as you’re leaving the mall, somebody suddenly injects you with something before dying at your feet - and the next thing you know, your eye feels like its been stabbed with a needle and you hear a voice in your head trying to strike up a conversation. To top it off, somebody is trying to kill you!
Meet Jack Putter, played by Martin Short in only his second film (Three Amigos! was his first). Short provides Innerspace with its biggest laughs, using his talent for neurotic, pratfall-prone physical comedy in what may be the best performance of his career. Putter unwittingly becomes the host of Pendleton’s oblivious speck, which is what throws him into an exciting and relentless adventure with car chases, stakeouts, an escape from a mobile meat locker, run-ins with an assassin that can kill by literally pointing at you - and love. This is not exactly a cruise in the Bahamas, but Putter becomes a better man because of it, which is fun to watch.
Meg Ryan is Pendleton’s investigative reporter girlfriend (back when reporters actually did more than report what was spoon-fed to them). She gets roped into helping the hapless Putter, while inside him floats the man who broke her heart one too many times. It just so happens she’s also tailing an international tech dealer called The Cowboy, played with extra cheese by Robert Picardo. Ryan could’ve been nothing more than The Girlfriend, but being the object of Pendleton and Putter’s affections, she becomes the heart of the movie. In part, through her presence, the characters and the audience learn the real excitement is not the cool action and villains but what is inside us, both literally and figuratively.
That gets to what is one of the most impressive things about Innerspace: the special effects. This may make me a product of the ‘90s CGI boom, but I’m not sure how effects like those in this movie were done without a computer. Much of the film takes place inside Putter’s body, showing us everything from the back of his eyeball to his pumping heart to the inside of his stomach. None of it looks dated and all of it still looks incredible. When Pendleton is at risk of being pumped into Putter’s heart, thereby possibly causing cardiac arrest, we believe the danger and are fully engaged because it looks like we are really inside Martin Short, watching this pod desperately hang on. And don’t even get me started on Putter’s grotesque, yet hilarious face spasms halfway through the movie!
The effects aren’t the only thing that makes Innerspace work. The performances – with Martin Short’s physical comedy and his chemistry with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan – really help make this more than an ‘effects film’. It has a lot of humor, but also a warmth that makes us care about what’s happening.
It’s also worth noting that director Joe Dante knows a thing or two about pacing. He’s not concerned with cutting to the chase; he builds his characters and he builds up the experiment without explicitly telling the audience ahead of time what it is. Dante allows us to catch our breath, have fun, and only includes action that is relevant to moving the story along.
Dante is the director of The Howling, both Gremlins movies, The Explorers, and The ‘burbs. He seems to be having fun here by throwing in actors from his previous movies (Robert Picardo and Kevin McCarthy), his cinematographer John Hora (as Ozzie Wexler), Australian baddie Vernon Wells, and Fiona Lewis, who worked for over 20 years before Innerspace, but has curiously failed to make another film since.
Innerspace isn’t a perfect sci-fi comedy. It sometimes defies logic and consistency, but that never gets in the way of the comedy and fun. If you don’t remember this movie or have never heard of it then I highly recommend hunting it down. I laughed a lot!
7/10
Should you see it? Rent
Innerspace is available on DVD.