I dont know about you, but unless it’s the occasional article suggesting that The ‘Burbs could desperately use more love, there’s a worrying lack of appreciation for Joe Dante’s late 80s output.
Switching from the sardonic horror of Piranha and The Howling to Spielberg produced family movies by way of the peerless Gremlins, Dante delivered a bunch of beautifully measured comedies that delivered his flair for eccentricity with more geeky warmth than a nerd-powered space heater. However, the box office results for these movies were acceptable at best, leaving them relegated as an undeserving side bar to Dante’s earlier, edgier stuff, which is a shame, because Innerspace especially is a cracking little comedy/sci-fi that fuses Fantasic Voyage with a madcap, fish out of water, spy film in a way that only Dante can.
Tuck Pendleton is a washed up U.S. Navy pilot has burnt his last bridge after his bitter attitude and herculean booze intake has soured his personal and professional relationships. However, the last straw is when his reporter girlfriend, Lydia Maxwell, finally walks out on him after his latest show of humiliating himself in front of his peers and the only thing he has left is the secret project in miniaturization he’s volunteered for.
However, after he and his special pod is shrunk down to microscopic levels, the lab is attacked by a rival organisation hoping to sell the technology on the black market and in the chaos, the hypodermic carring a tiny tuck is hastened away from the villians.
It’s at this point we are introduced to Jack Putter, a lowly grocery clerk whose hypochondria is far larger than his diminutive frame would suggest and it’s into his keister that the luckless Pendleton is desperately injected into by chance. Needless to say, when Tuck realises what’s happened, he’s not best pleased, especially considering he’s supposed to have been inserted into a laboratory rabbit and not a grown-ass man with a nervous disposition. However, after making contact with his fidgety host by fiddling around with his optic nerve and his inner ear, Tuck realises that this nervous little man is now in a hell of a lot of danger with enemies lurking around looking to obtain a vital chip located with Pendleton’s pod.
Making a hugely unorthodox team, Tuck frantically tries to play an internal hype man as Jack has to face a string of dangerous types such as pallid hitman, Mr. Igoe; stetson wearing, black marketer, the Cowboy and pompous, white suited, arch villain, Victor Scrimshaw.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a proper adventure without some sort of ticking clock, and if Jack doesn’t rise to the challenge, Tuck’s going to run out of air as he floats around inside of his unwitting partner’s body.
There’s been shrinking movies before (The Incedible Shrinking Man and the aforementioned Fantastic Voyage immediately spring to mind) and there’s been shrinking movies after (Honey, I shrunk The Kids and, of course, the Ant-Man trilogy), but there’s never quite been one like Innerspace. The movie manages to mix an adventure movie, a sci-fi movie, a buddy movie, some typically broad, Martin Short-type comedy and even throws in some tongue-in-cheek, Roger Moore era James Bond villains; and yet somehow Innerspace manages to balance all these aspects with barely a wobble to be seen. On paper, it shouldn’t work. Technically, Dennis Quaid as swaggering pilot Tuck and Martin Short as the perpetually nervous Jack dont even share the same, quantum space, let alone a damn screen and all the while Short prat-falls his way though a procession of high-risk action sequences, Quaid spends the entire time delivering pep-talks almost entirely from a cramped cockpit. However, thanks to a magnificently layered script, the sheer charisma from the two leads and Dante’s keen talent for staging weird situations as if it’s the most normal thing in the world, Innerspace is something of a total package.
Martin Short, as always, goes for fucking broke, enacting full blown meltdowns after Putter first hears Tuck talking to him from within “Somebody help me! I’m possessed!” and trying to become a hero despite originally having the disposition of a quivering chihuahua on fireworks night and it’s great fun to see him at the height of his powers in a movie other than a straight, out and out comedy. On the other hand, Quaid has to somehow no be swallowed up entirely by Short’s capering and he has to do it while sealed inna space smaller than a broom cupboard, but with that drawling voice and mischievous grin, he somehow manages it and you’d swear that the two were on the set at the same time thanks to the palpable chemistry at hand.
With the toughest part of the story cinched, it’s down to ILM to provide convincing views of Putter’s innards as Tuck traverses his way through arteries and canals and they do exemplary work in the days before CGI as they realise suitably squishy visuals without being too off putting. This leaves Dante free to pack the film with his usual batch of knowing, 50s, cameos (Dick Miller! Kenneth Tobey!) and a whole clutch of amusingly bizarre baddies. You can tell that the director is having an incredible amount of fun, not just with casting Dante regulars Kevin McCarthy and a scene-stealing Robert Picardo as various flamboyant law breakers, but also gives us 80s henchman of choice, Vernon Wells, as the firearm-digited henchman, Mr. Igoe, whose multipurpose prosthetic gives a sinister new meaning to the term finger bang.
However, the sole chink in Innerspace’s armour ends up being Meg Ryan whose typical, gusty/ditzy schtick somehow proves to be an ill fit for the stylized weirdness on show here. In fact, that Innerspace often swings for the fences when it comes to outright silliness and somehow yet never falls into parody is a minor miracle that really should be lauded more often. It has big, Buster Keaton type action scenes (behold Short himself dangling from a speeding truck), great characters, surrealistic body horror (Jack’s painful face alteration is a belter), duelling miniaturized submersibles and a ton of genuine, laugh out loud moments that comes organically from the story.
Quite unlike anything released at the time (name me another film that sees a bad guy vanquished by being digested in stomach acid) and painfully overdue for a revaluation, Innerspace not only proves that a hero can (literally) live within us all, but it admirably avoids any cheap gags about having one man be “inside” another. Definitely a grower.
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