Thoughts on Sphere

via Giphy/Courtesy Warner Bros.

"We're not alone. We are definitely not alone. Harry, it's trying to make contact with us."

"Whatever it was, it was inside that sphere. Now it's out and free to act."

*the idea of a powerful 300-year-old, possibly accidental hermit alien named Jerry is considered*

"I would be happy if Jerry had no emotions whatsoever. ... What happens if Jerry gets mad?"

Sometimes a movie needs a big finish. That wisdom eluded the adapters of Michael Crichton's Sphere, a team including director Barry Levinson and screenwriters Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio and Kurt Wimmer. Those guys weren't completely opposed to taking liberties for dramatic or commercial purposes. At least one of them came up with psychologist Norman (Dustin Hoffman) having had an affair with his former patient, marine biologist Beth (Sharon Stone). When it came time to end Sphere, no one was quite as bold.

In all fairness, "We are our own worst enemies" is a simple, effective concept. Kudos to Crichton for coming up with it. Sphere climaxes with Norman, Beth and mathematician Harry (Samuel L. Jackson) realizing the incidents of mayhem that endangered their lives and killed Fletcher (Queen Latifah), Edmunds (Marga Gómez) and Barnes (Peter Coyote) of the U.S. Navy, plus astrophysicist Ted (Liev Schreiber), came from their own fears. The trio of characters played by above-the-title stars each entered the sphere and gained the ability to make what they imagine come to life*. I don't have much of a problem with Norman, Beth and Harry all having anguish, but I hate the big reveal being overshadowed by the more conventional finale of "We've gotta get out of here before it self-destructs!" Hell, pull a Ghostbusters and make Norman, Beth and Harry encounter the accidentally-contemplated sea monster or alien that had been teased for the last two hours. Or aggressive forms of themselves, like a vengeful version of Beth that's coming after Norman. Or zombies of the accidental victims. If you have movie stars, give them something good to fight.

*This also happened in the book, which I've never read. I was waiting for a twist that Barnes went in, too.

"Paging Dr. Halperin! Come back to reality."

One of my lasting memories of 1998 is the Deep Impact-Armageddon rivalry. A "smart" popcorn flick, as Deep supposedly was, got much attention. Sphere is a lesser-known soldier in the blockbuster battle, and for good reason. It's not that inventive and it goes on and on and on. There are parts I liked, like the chemistry between Hoffman and Jackson, which nearly transcends the type of movie they're in. Stone, Schreiber and Coyote aren't bad either, but their characters are more confining. Or maybe their improvising wasn't as good as Dustin and Samuel's. Latifah's just there to get killed off first.

Sphere has some effective surprises, like the discovery of a mid-millennium astronaut's corpse. I liked how logic was more or less followed in explaining the sphere's journey. It was collected by the astronauts, who also couldn't handle their new powers. Their spacecraft ended up back in time because of a black hole and at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. I can accept that, as well as Norman, Beth and Harry sending the sphere back to space. It's just the actual moment is unintentionally hilarious. It looks like something else from 1998: Poochie "going back to his planet." And it came after a poignant scene with Hoffman, Stone and Jackson.

"It's a little hard to let go, you know? ... Something that could have been. This gift? The power to make your dreams come true. We're given the greatest gift in the history of mankind. We're given this magic ball, and it says, 'Imagine what you will, and you can have it.' That's an extraordinary gift, but we're so primitive, we ... we manifested the worst in us, because what we have inside us is what we have inside of us, instead of the best of us. What does that say about us?"

"We weren't ready, Norman."

"We have what's called an imagination. ... I mean, I mean, look what we're capable of. We can ... we're not, we're not ready. ... *to Beth* You know, a long time ago ... I did something very, very inappropriate with you and I'm sorry. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I don't have any answers, Norman. But these guys are coming, so let's ..."

"Okay, we're gonna agree to forget ... the sphere, the power, all that ever was."

*they join hands*

"I don't know how to get this going, Harry, you're the mathematician."

"How 'bout we just count to three?"

"I couldn't have come up with that."

Not Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- "You know something about that, don't you, Norman? How the pressure can attack your integrity?"

-- Box Office: Grossing $37 million on an estimated $73 million budget, this opened at No. 3 and came in at No. 58 for 1998.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "The hushed mystery of undersea sci-fi eludes (Levinson)," Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote in Entertainment Weekly. "The sincere awe required to communicate the implications of something that humans just can't grasp is not his thing. (That was the very awe Robert Zemeckis delivered so bravely in Contact)." "The more the plot reveals, the more we realize how little there is to reveal," Roger Ebert observed. Desson Howe: "Ultimately, the explanation we've been waiting for turns out to be just that: an explanation." Todd McCarthy, Variety: "'The Monster' (is) nothing other than a big shape on a radar screen. Amazing what a big budget will buy you nowadays."

-- Critic's Corner, the stars: "To see the likes of this cast cower and scream and be dazzled with special effects just makes me sigh," wrote a bummed out Gene Siskel. Janet Maslin: "Stone walks the walk and talks the mumbo-jumbo as plausibly as the others do." Kenneth Turan felt that "Hoffman and Jackson (perform) at their standard expert levels and Stone (gives) one of her better, most restrained performances." Schwarzbaum didn't buy what the screenwriters added. "Would a woman as alluring as Beth once have suffered a psychotic breakdown just because she was spurned by a married man as un-hunky as Norman? Only in your macho dreams, pals."

-- Awards Watch: Stone and her hairstyle were each nominated for a Stinker, the Cracked, if you will, of best of the worst movie awards. She lost to the Spice Girls and the hair lost to ... her alleged ex-bed buddy, Joe Eszterhas (Burn Hollywood Burn). Sharon's coif, by the way, was the only female hair nominated.

-- Hey, It's ...!: Huey Lewis and James Pickens, Jr.

-- Hey, It's 1998!: A few weeks after Sphere opened, it played a minor part in one of my favorite out there SNL sketches. Garth Brooks, Molly Shannon and others are trapped for a month in a Loews theater, forced to watch nothing but trailers for awful movies ("Shelley Long is My Mom, the Mime. Rated R."). My favorite bit is Molly's delivery of the line, "Shelley Long has died for your sins, you sons of bitches!" And, of course, Samuel was SNL's first host of the new year, sharing his resolutions like "Continue to kick ass," "Show the man that I mean business" and "Take a computer class."

-- I love that Wag the Dog was made while Levinson and Hoffman waited for Warner Bros. to recommit to Sphere. It's interesting to consider a world where this, not Kevin Costner's The Postman, was Warners' big Christmas 1997 release. It still would have likely lost at the box office to Titanic. Just like Harry feared, some things are unavoidable.

-- "Can somebody tell me what the hell that's supposed to be?"

-- Next: The Wedding Singer. On deck: U.S. Marshals.