Retro Film Review: Sphere (1998)

The author of this review didn't read many Michael Crichton's novels for the very same reasons he didn't read many novels by Stephen King. It required too much time and effort for something that could be seen on the big screen due to both authors' enormous popularity among Hollywood producers. One of few Crichton's novels I read was Sphere. That book was huge disappointment, but when I heard about film version I had some hopes. Good literature usually gets adapted into bad movies while many great films had its origin in bad pieces of literature. Expecting bad Crichton's novel being adapted into decent film wasn't unrealistic. Unfortunately, 1998 film version of Sphere, directed by Barry Levinson, showed that bad literature can result in bad films.

The plot starts with psychologist Dr. Norman Goodman (played by Dustin Hoffman) being summoned by US government to take part in expedition at the bottom of Pacific. It turns out that an artificial structure, apparently of extraterrestrial origin, was stuck there for couple of centuries. Goodman joins the team consisting of biochemist and his former lover Dr. Beth Halperin (played by Sharon Stone), mathematician Dr. Harry Adams (played by Samuel L. Jackson), astrophysicist Dr. Ted Fielding (played by Live Schrieber) and US Navy Captain Harold Barnes (played by Peter Coyote). They descend to undersea habitat and start investigating the craft. Soon they realise that the alien spacecraft isn't what they thought it was, but they are even more amazed with the discovery of giant sphere within it. Their amazement turns to horror when they start experiencing nasty incident involving murderous jellyfish and giant squids - parts of marine fauna which isn't supposed to exist in that kind of deep undersea environment.

Barry Levinson, due to his reputation created by minimalist urban dramas, was an odd choice to direct science fiction spectacle with 100 million US$ of budget. This budget is hardly seen on the screen because the most attractive thing in this film - special effects – appear rarely and last briefly. Small undersea habitat with its claustrophobic setting gives few opportunities for display of "cool" technology (although films like Alien and The Abyss show that such opportunities can be found). Because of all that, the only thing that could pin audience to the screen is either strong story, interesting characters or exciting action. Viewers expecting to find anything from that are going to be utterly disappointed. Barry Levinson obviously lacks experience in directing action scenes, and instead of suspense we get something which is supposed to be drama. There are few suspense or action scenes and for the most part characters talk rather than act. That only clearly shows Crichton's inability to write decent dialogue or interesting characters. There are few actors in this film, but they all fail to make any impact. Dustin Hoffman seems uncomfortable in his rather thankless role; Sharon Stone with cropped hair loses any trace of sex appeal while Samuel L. Jackson, whose mere presence could have rescued many other hopeless films, gets wasted in his role.

The ultimate reason why Sphere represents utter failure is in Crichton's novel. Screenwriting team of Stephen Hauser and Paul Attanasio is too faithful to the original text, making its major flaw clear to anyone with the basic knowledge of film history. Crichton's novel was unoriginal and uninspired - it wasted its intriguing opening for the plot that borrows main idea from science fiction classics like Forbidden Planet and Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. By coincidence, another big budget science fiction film did just that shortly before Sphere went into cinema - Paul W.S. Anderson's Event Horizon. Comparison between Sphere and that film, which was bad by 1990s Hollywood standards, is even more embarrassing for Levinson's work than comparisons between Sphere and aforementioned science fiction classics. Anderson's film also borrowed old idea for new but uninspired film, but at least it had exotic settings and few "cool" special effects. This film instead offers only more than two hours of boredom and the surprisingly weak ending that gives new definition to the word "pointlessness". Word "pointless" is the one that should be attributed to this whole film, one of the worst to come from Hollywood in past decade and one that would test patience and temper of the audience like few others.

RATING: 1/10 (--)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on February 2nd 2004)

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