Director: Joe Dante
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, Meg Ryan, Kevin McCarthy
Have I Seen it Before: Oh, sure. I might have been compelled to include this in the reviews much earlier, as it was playing during the marathon of movies where I got to meet Dante*. As it came fresh off the now infamous summer of 2023 blackout, I opted to go home before it started to sleep in an air conditioned bed for the first time in over a week. Alas.
Did I Like It: There are movies Joe Dante directs where he is allowed (or maybe he stole?) free reign to do whatever he wanted, then there are those movies where he is hired to do a job, and inevitably does a yeoman’s job. Oddly enough, this one falls somewhere in the middle, which has a certain refreshing quality to it. At it’s core, it’s not much more than a slightly modernized riff on Fantastic Voyage (1966), which is interesting enough. The script justifies itself by forging together an odd couple out of all-American Quaid (how has he never played Jonathan Kent, when his son has already played Superman?) and comic goofball Short. Their chemistry fuel the movie almost entirely, made all the more impressive that the two stars barely share a few minutes of screen time physically, shifting the pitch on this film from an Odd Couple meets Fantastic Voyage to a high-concept comedy version of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982). Throw in some Looney Tunes-fueled high energy sequences, and you’ve got perhaps not Dante’s greatest film, but certainly one worth a watch all the same.
*I told him that Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and Matinee (1993) were two of my favorite films. He politely thanked me, but there was an undercurrent to the thanks that—perhaps appropriately so—wished I had seen more movies. Alas.