'90s Class: Sphere (1998)

 Jurassic Park was a hit, so they all must be, right?  Right?

This is 1998's Sphere, one of many Michael Crichton Film Adaptations from the 1990s.  To be fair, the track record is pretty good.  Besides JP, there's Disclosure, Rising Sun, Congo and...The 13th Warrior.  Again- a 'pretty good' track record.

This one, oddly, comes to us from Director Barry Levinson, who is not the person you think of when you think 'Let's give $80 million to make this Sci-Fi Film,' is it?  No knock on the guy- it's just not his niche.

With many Stars- Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone and Samuel L. Jackson-, Character Actors- Peter Coyote, Liev Schreiber- and two different Musicians/Performers on board, this couldn't have lost money, right?  Right?

To find out how, read on...

A quartet of Experts- Hoffman, Stone, Jackson and Schrieber- are sent to make first contact- oops, someone took that Title first!- with an alien ship.

The problem- the plan is based on a paper written by Hoffman...who was just kind of just winging it.

Whoops.

They go to the Wreck, which apparently has been there for hundreds of years.

Of course, this 2 hour plus Film makes you wait until about 20 minutes in to get there...

They find strange stuff- like logs mentioning people being there IN THE FUTURE- and eventually come across the titular object.

It's apparently silver in the Book, but when they did it for the Film it looked off.

I honestly like this change.

The group are trapped by an unseen storm- I guess there was no room in the Budget for wind- and things change when one of them goes into the Sphere.

Given that its the title object, it probably might be big.

While he's asleep, strange stuff starts to happen and the ancillary Characters start to die.

The Film works to fill out a Mad Lib that you never expected- STAR killed by CREATURE.

Did you pick- Queen Latifah killed by Jellyfish?  

You win!

They begin to communicate with some sort of spirit/being that exists in the computers/sphere.

It starts out friendly...until it decidedly does not.

The rest of the ancillary Cast dies off (which includes Liev Schrieber at this point in 1998) and the remaining Cast must figure out the mystery.

As it turns out, the Sphere- which they all entered at some point- brought their thoughts/fears to life and played them against each other.

As a final test, they must agree to let the Sphere wipe their memory of everything.

So, yeah, the whole Film is, say it with me, entirely pointless.

Now in an arty way.  The End.

A pretty good Film, if a bit slow and dense at times.  They sure take their time setting things up.  This works...to a point.

The actual Sci-Fi element of this is pretty interesting.  The Setting looks nice.  Even if $80 million was too much to spend on this, you see the money on screen.  FYI the Budget for Jurassic Park was $63 million.  Which was a better investment?

Weirdly, the Film acts vague with so many aspects and never quite shows some things.  Shouldn't we have seen one Squid?  We see lots of baby ones and all of those jellyfish, but I'd like to see more.  Was it a Budget thing?  Again- $80 million.  Did they make it and it was crap, so they cut it?

Sphere is a Sci-Fi Film with a good premise, but it kind of botches the execution.  At least it has this Huey Lewis Cameo.

Next time, a '90s Horror Film that I've remembered being a thing for a couple of Decades.  Was it finally worth the watch?  Stay tuned...