Joe Dante has never quite reached name-brand status as a director; the only movie he\u2019s ever had complete control over was Gremlins 2: The New Batch<\/i> (1990; also, to date, the only movie in which the villains break the fourth wall until Hulk Hogan demands it rebuilt). He\u2019s a self-professed member of the VHS class, whose work found more fans on the weekly pilgrimage to Movie Gallery than the multiplex, though he doesn\u2019t mind<\/span><\/a> his fate. As he told Paste Magazine, \u201cI\u2019m a firm believer that you really don\u2019t know the worth of a movie until at least a couple of years have gone by.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n Thirty years have gone by since Dante\u2019s most commercially minded movie reached audiences \u2014 or, if we\u2019re being honest, didn\u2019t. To this day, he blames<\/span><\/a> the name.<\/span><\/p>\n Joe Dante\u2019s Innerspace <\/i>begins with a trick. Take too long picking your popcorn size and you\u2019d miss it, but it sets the tone for everything to come. The opening credits play out over a crystalline abyss shot in macro. Light refracts endlessly, spilling rainbows across fissure and facet as Jerry Goldsmith\u2019s score spells shorthand for the unknown, the alien. Then bourbon trickles over the ice and our sauced hero picks up his drink. While it handily establishes the molecular conceit of the movie, it\u2019s also a fair warning: Just when you think you\u2019ve figured out what you\u2019re looking at, Innerspace <\/i>pours in the bourbon and turns it upside down.<\/span><\/p>\n It starts as Top Gun<\/i>, complete with Meg Ryan (who actually gets to do something this time) and a hotshot pilot whose body is bouncing checks his ego won\u2019t stop writing. This professional burnout \u2014 played by Dennis Quaid like an impossibly young, impossibly reckless Harrison Ford \u2014 loses his love and his livelihood in one night of bitter, drunken revelry. His only shot at redemption is a high-risk experiment in miniaturization, flying into the bloodstream of a\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Then we meet Martin Short as a grocery store cashier with more than a few chips in his China. He\u2019s a hypochondriac (which his doctor appreciates) and a pushover (which his boss appreciates) and an all-around wimp of a guy (which his workplace crush who\u2019s stringing him along appreciates). Out of nowhere, Innerspace <\/i>becomes that \u201880s movie about a geek overcoming his neuroses you kind of remember seeing last Sunday on WGN\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Then a squad of corporate spies in matching jumpsuits raid the lab, interrupt the experiment and knock out the entire staff, trying to find the microchip\/MacGuffin that makes the shrinking possible. But an intrepid scientist runs off with the pilot, banged-up but none-the-wiser inside a test tube\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n But then the bad guy from Commando<\/i>, here a semi-robotic hitman with interchangeable arms and a license plate that says \u201cSNAPON,\u201d hunts him through the mall from Commando\u2014<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n By the time a rousing Rod Stewart rendition of \u201cTwistin\u2019 the Night Away\u201d takes us to the credits, Innerspace <\/i>manages to be a buddy comedy, a spy thriller, a chase movie, an off-kilter romance, an effects-driven sci-fi showstopper, and a body-swap farce with light body horror. It includes spies, cowboys, drunken dance numbers, digestive fluids, Bugs Bunny, a mech-suit, a briefcase full of bad guys, plenty of slapstick, and the most literal representation of heart-pounding suspense ever put to film. <\/span><\/p>\n On Innerspace<\/i>, Jeffrey Boam mined a concept for all it was worth, then mined a few more at the same time. It\u2019s a skill he\u2019d demonstrate again on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade<\/i>, which a wise friend of mine once pointed out includes an action sequence on almost every form of transportation possible in 1938. But while he laid the hectic groundwork, no director could\u2019ve made Innerspace <\/i>work like Joe Dante.<\/span><\/p>\n The action is breathless, but never suffocating. The effects are jaw-dropping (it took Dante mailing<\/span><\/a> Roger Ebert a prop platelet to convince the critic it wasn\u2019t shot inside an actual human body) but never overwhelm. The very concept thumbs its nose at traditional blockbusters \u2014 the tough-as-nails hero is trapped helplessly inside the nebbish comedic relief \u2014 and Dante never forgets it.<\/span><\/p>\n I used to play a writing game with friends where we\u2019d start with an agreed-upon prompt, then pass the story around, each adding only one sentence. If you played that same game with Fantastic Voyage <\/i>as the jumping-off point, added a little oversight and a lot of inspiration, it\u2019d look like Innerspace.<\/i> Well worth watching and remembering in the age of reboots.<\/span><\/p>\n Just a shame they never came up with a better title<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n Jeremy Herbert<\/a> lives, human-sized, in Cleveland.<\/em><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/crookedscoreboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/inner-space-196x300.jpg\")
<\/a>Innerspace <\/i>began as the brainchild of producer Peter Guber and, despite being about a miniaturized human having adventures within the body of a human-sized human, it allegedly had nothing to do with Fantastic Voyage <\/i>(1966). <\/i>But Joe Dante couldn\u2019t see much of a difference and neither could Dead Zone<\/i> screenwriter Jeffrey Boam. Dante left and Boam repeatedly turned down the rewriting gig until he decided<\/span><\/a> to throw most of it out, lean into the loony concept, and draft something almost relentlessly entertaining. Boam\u2019s Innerspace<\/i> script, in turn, lured the likes of John Carpenter, Richard Donner and Steven Spielberg. Obviously Spielberg (see: \u201cbiggest cheese,\u201d Jurassic Park<\/i>, your childhood) nabbed it, but he didn\u2019t want to direct. So, he gave it to a director in his Amblin stable, the only one on record as also not wanting to direct it. But that was the old draft. Boam\u2019s version fit Dante like a glove. The cartoon kind, with three fingers, that come standard issue to every animated animal with a gift for wisecracks and wreaking havoc.<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/crookedscoreboard.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/martin-short-as-jack-putter-in-innerspace.jpg\")
<\/a>The scientist injects Dennis Quaid into Martin Short and the movie really <\/i>kicks into high gear.<\/span><\/p>\n
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