Innerspace

#2 in my ranking of Joe Dante’s filmography.

Joe Dante goes corporate, sanding off most of his edges, and coming up with a movie that ends up both distinctly his and feeling more like a product than anything else he’d made before. Perhaps giving him a box to operate in (similar to what he was put into by Spielberg on Gremlins) is the way to get the best out of Dante (though he himself called it the closest to his intention in final result, so maybe he’s just naturally a collaborator at heart). Yeah, we lose some of his charm, but giving him stronger narrative strictures in which to navigate focuses him and gets him to produce more complete stories that work on their own. Perhaps if he could have found a writing partner who was more fully on his wavelength could Dante have made Innerspace more distinctly his, but it’s nice to see Dante applying all of his technical skills well here.

Lieutenant Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) is a test pilot who is the only one crazy enough to sign up for a secret, shoe-string budgeted project led by Ozzie (the cinematographer John Hora) to miniaturize a pod, insert it into a rabbit (called Buggs because Dante loves Looney Tunes, of course). At the same time, the high-strung grocery store clerk, Jack Putter (Martin Short) is struggling to get the pretty workmate Wendy (Wendy Schaal) to agree to go out with him while dealing with a nightmare about a customer pulling a gun on him when the register goes haywire and charges her too much, all while suffering from hypochondria as dealt with by his doctor Greenbush (William Schallert). When corporate thieves led by Dr. Margaret Canker (Fiona Lewis) raid the miniaturization lab and try to steal the proprietary chips that make the whole process possible, Ozzie takes the miniaturized Tuck and injects him into Jack as a last-ditch effort.

The way I describe it feels a bit overburdened with mechanics, but it’s surprisingly light and spry, helped in no small part by the winning cast, in particular Meg Ryan as the reporter and Lydia and Tuck’s ex-girlfriend. Considering the behind the scenes talk of Dante caring little for performance or his actors, much more concerned with the physical challenges of production than finding the emotional truth with his actors, it’s actually not that surprising that his actors are coasting on their natural charm like Quaid and Ryan or just performing to the rafters like Short, Dante essentially just cast really well, providing them with parts and scenes to just have fun with themselves. It helps create this lightly comic tone through it all, buoyed by the obviously comic in intention script by Jeffrey Boam and Chip Proser (that started out more seriously when Dante passed on directing it at first), and that comic tone makes it all just fun.

The mechanics of the plot are all about Jack walking around with Tuck in his body directing him, trying to find out the solution to their problem which takes them through the little underworld of high priced weapons dealers as represented by The Cowboy (Robert Picardo), a massive corporation run by Victor Scrimshaw (Kevin McCarthy), and some light kidnapping and facial changes. It never feels like too much in terms of plot mechanics, the characters and their motivations feeling straightforward and never out of control even as it moves quickly from one event to the next.

The real star of the film is the special effects, and they’re really great. The model work to create these beautiful looks at the inside of the human body are borderline awe-inspiring (Dante’s filmmaking isn’t designed to inspire awe, so he doesn’t take that emotion as far as another filmmaker could), and the looks at the bloodstream, fat cells, the ear, and the inside of the eye in particular look both realistic and painterly at the same time. There’s real genuine artistry at play here in the special effects led by Dennis Muren, and it’s consistently a highlight whenever we see them whether Tuck is in the bloodstream or Tuck and the miniaturized bad guy are duking it out in Jack’s lung.

What takes me from a more modest appreciation for the spectacle and light entertainment of the film is the effort to give Jack a real arc of growth, in particular his final scene where he pushes past the things holding him back at the beginning of the film to a surprisingly triumphant conclusion. He earns his win, and it’s really satisfying to watch, giving the ending of the film a real uplift that, I feel, pushes the overall film upwards, making it Dante’s best film up to this point.

Innerspace is a fun film. It does solid character work with a great finale for one of the main characters. It has great special effects. It’s light and amusing consistently. Joe Dante had a real win here, and it’s just too bad that it wasn’t more of a success at the box office of the time.

Rating: 3.5/4