Jackson as the “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea”-obsessed mathematician, Liev Schreiber as the enthusiastic knowledge-seeker and Peter Coyote as the gruff Navy boss. The group of scientists and explorers are played by an all-star cast, including Dustin Hoffman as the steady psychiatrist, Sharon Stone as the jittery biologist, Samuel L. Writers Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio, working from an adaptation by Kurt Wimmer, are faithful to Crichton’s book in structure and characters. Stars: Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Writers: Stephen Hauser, Paul Attanasio (screenplay) Kurt Wimmer (adaptation) Michael Crichton (novel) And it’s clear this is an expensive movie, with a lot of the money going to the sets: a habitat for the explorers, and a huge spaceship of unknown origin that contains an alien sphere. Composer Elliot Goldenthal conjures wonder in the fashion of “2001” and “Contact” and fear in the nature of “The Abyss” and “Event Horizon” – both of which hit theaters first but post-date the “Sphere” novel.Īdam Greenberg’s underwater cinematography complements Goldenthal’s score with its own strange, dark beauty. Setting the story aside for a moment, the film is a work of art. Goldenthal is goldenĮven though I think a theoretical 3-hour cut of director Barry Levinson’s film would be a masterpiece, I am a “Sphere” apologist even given its actual state. This Michael Crichton adaptation had little chance of being a mainstream hit upon release, as it offers something to tick off everyone: It’s too long (2 hours, 14 minutes) if the story doesn’t hook you, it’s too short if it does hook you, it’s too dependent on Crichton’s 1987 novel if you haven’t read it, and it diverts too much from the book if you’re a fan. Wag The Dog, shows where his sensibilities really lie.It’s been more than 20 years now, so I guess “Sphere” (1998) won’t become a cult classic. He may have pulled off a Crichton story before (in 1994's sexual harassment caper, Disclosure), but one suspects that Levinson's first foray into sci-fi may be his last. However, it's a curious indictment when the best moments in a film of this magnitude come from characters sitting around and talking. There's some stewing tension between Hoffman and Stone (potential members of the Mile Low Club), and an inspired gag in which Hoffman, upon whose report the government based its alien and encounter strategy, confesses he merely ripped off Isaac Asimov and Rod Serling. That's not to say that Sphere is without its moments. And while one would normally divorce oneself from the source novel when appraising a film, Levinson doesn't allow that, following Crichton's novel too literally, dividing the film up episodically, each segment preceded by a flashed chapter heading Indeed, on more than one occasion this tends toward anticlimax. There's a baffling bombardment of ideas, including underwater eggs and an inexplicable power cut. It is not merely the characters who are left to wonder what the hell is going on.
#Michael crichton sphere review movie#
Hell, it even finds time to pop up on-line for a cyberchat with the folks from science central.Īnd it is here, unfortunately, that the movie becomes slightly unstuck, for while the stage is set for an Alamo of isolated earthlings to face the awesome power "out there", in the absence of a discernible antagonist, the film's attempted psychological drama becomes increasingly muddled. They, we learn, are still emitting some sort of signal from within.Īll is not what it seems, however, and after a shock discovery about the nature of the craft on the ocean floor, the vibes are traced to a mysterious golden globe in the cargo hold which possesses the power to evoke killer jellyfish and mean little sea snakes, and to induce neurotic hallucinations in the humans. There's a psychologist (Hoffman), a biochemist (Stone), a mathematician (Jackson) and an astrophysicist (Liev Schreiber) - all cooped up in a claustrophobic underwater habitat and duly drilled by their military charge (Peter Coyote) into a welcoming committee to greet the spacecraft's presumed crew of little green men.
Thus a posse of disparate scientists plumb the depths to investigate a massive spacecraft that has - judging by the coral encrusted upon it - been lodged at the bottom of the Pacific for around 300 years.
Especially given the substance - alien contact - still Hollywood's flavour du jour.Ĭomparisons will inevitably be drawn with James Cameron's 1989 thriller The Abyss, but the "big idea" - a space odyssey that takes place underwater - can be copyrighted by Crichton, whose 1987 novel is followed here to the letter. Take a science-fiction best seller by uberscribe Michael Crichton, throw in a heavyweight cast, float the project on a $100 million budget, entrust it to the skilled hands of Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man, Bugsy) and you have a project that generates no small degree of expectation.