Sphere

Rating: *
Date Seen: 1998-02-13

Sphere is the sci-fi disappointment of the season. With a cast of such great actors, Dustin Hoffman, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sharon Stone, it's hard to believe that this movie could go wrong. But it does.

The acting is competent, but the script is so bad that it's hard to care. There are many half-developed side-plots, such as the past romance between Dustin Hoffman's character, Norman, and Beth, played by Sharon Stone. The story seems fragmented.

Actually, I guess the concept of the thing could have been good, but it was so poorly done. So much didn't make sense. Why would the military send this rag-tag team of seemlingly unqualified civilians to the buttom of the ocean, espeically if it involved something so big as the possibility of finding an alien species. One of them had a history of mental illness. Doesn't the Navy do background checks? Apparently, in the "Sphere" universe, they do not. They just blindly sent the team, based on a paper of dubious merit written for a former White House administration by the Norman Goodman character.

Even the editing and cinematograpy was lousy. The special effects were nothing spectacular. Ther are a lot of fuzzy underwater shots, which lack visual detail when they need it most. The characters would be expound about the size of the craft, and I guess we were supposed to gather from their words that it was big, becasue the images sure didn't convey it.