The Robinsons: Lost in Space (2004)

Overrated and overhyped

Good concept, poorly executed.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

A waste of 90 minutes of my life

"The Robinsons: Lost in Space" is a 42-minute pilot television episode for a series that never got picked up. It is basically loosely based on a much older show that got some Emmy Awards consideration several decades earlier, but this remake did not cause enough attraction so it would get turned into a "real" show. The director here is John Woo who made several pretty famous films already and the writer team is also pretty well-known, one of them even an Oscar winner. Guess in exchange for that they had to save a bit of money on the cast. i don't know anybody there except Adrianne Palicki and she isn't exactly a big star either. The story is basically set in the future, about a family who is stuck between fighting evil alien creatures while also trying to get along with each other. This could have been great material for a comedy, but it is all drama and I miss some lighter moments in here. Maybe that is also one of the reason why I give this one a thumbs-down. I would not have watched a television show based on that short film here.

The wait continues for those who love those early episodes of "Lost in Space" from 1965 and want more.First we watched the original series slowly degenerate into camp. Then we got the 1998 theatrical film which started promisingly and then, like the series, got silly. And now this pilot, in which the first half consists of whining characters we never really learn to care about, and the second half is a formulaic alien invasion story.Where is the sense of wonder here that permeated the original series? Douglas Petrie's script, in attempt to add character depth to what many people consider a ridiculous show, just falls flat. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't send a family who can't get their you-know-what together on a major space mission. And John Woo's direction, especially in the action-packed second half of the show, proceeds at breakneck speed with no sense of pacing. Like too many films these days, it's fastfastfast and never pauses to take a breath.The antagonists in this pilot were a particularly poor choice. Unlike Dr. Smith, who was interesting because you always wanted to know what was going on in that scheming mind of his, these villains have absolutely no sense of subtlety. When the show demands a crafty J. R. Ewing-type, we get instead marauding critters out of a 1950s horror film.And did you notice -- so much of the focus in this pilot is on the kids! Gee, what went wrong with the original series? Oh yeah, that's right!Kevin Burns, whose "Time Tunnel" pilot was much better but still resembled the original in little besides nomenclature, really needs to turn over the duties of reviving Irwin Allen TV series to someone who understands them better. "Lost in Space" could be a great show again, and it deserves better than this.

I thought that another reboot couldn't possibly be worse than the original campy series or the campy '90s movie. I was wrong.The first three segments are all about the teenagers insufferably whining. There's no action at all during this part, nor are the characters doing anything to make us root for them. It's all bad cliché family drama stuff.Finally, an alien ship attacks, but we don't know who the aliens are or why they're attacking. They're generic "bad aliens" and do nothing to increase the interest of what's happening.I find it nearly impossible to believe that this came from John Woo, a director who knows how to shoot more exciting films than this, and Doug Petrie, a really good writer from the Joss Whedon camp. I don't know how this went so wrong, but it did indeed go very wrong.Seek this out to satisfy your curiosity alone. I can very much see why the WB didn't pick this up for a series.

I found this while browsing, don't remember where. The quality kinda sucked (352x240 at 1150 kbps) but I was curious about it. Sadly, I wasn't overly impressed with it. It was kinda standard TV, but still almost entertaining enough.Huge goof: When Will and David are threatened to get sucked out into space, they seem to be suspended in mid-air, just grabbing some handle, However, Will's cables are clearly visible in two or three shots.Also kinda goofy is the use of 2003 Battlestar Galactica music (Richard Gibbs' "Are You Alive?", "Main Title" and "By Your Command") and right after that, Thomas Newman's music from American Beauty (track no. 9 Bloodless Freak").The morphing of Penny into a baby is mildy surprising, maybe they were gonna use it as an arc, like Penny gets sucked into so time-space warp and returns as a teen, preteen or fully grown adult, depending on which actress the network owes a favour to.And Jayne Brook as mom Maureen is hotter than Adrianne 'big chin' Palicki as daughter Judy, that's never a good sign. I'm not sad that it's not picked up, but i'd not have minded watching it on TV. Buying it or giving it space on my hard drive, nah.