SPHERE
The story is this: an incredibly huge spacecraft of alien origin has
been discovered at the bottom of the ocean, apparently having been there
for hundreds of years. So a team of scientists is collected for the top-secret
mission of exploring it and retrieving anything on board that might prove
scientifically valuable. The most unsettling aspect of the thing, apart
from the obvious, is that sensors detect that something onboard is still
running.
The team assigned to go make friends with the little green men is made
up of five civilians, each with a relevant expertise: Ted the astrophysicist
(Liev Schreiber), Harry the mathematician (Samuel L. Jackson), Norman the
psychologist (Dustin Hoffman), Beth the marine biologist (Sharon Stone),
and Harold the commander (Peter Coyote). Each is recognized as an expert
in his field, and they all seem to know and have issues with each other.
And there is no shortage of controlled animosity.
When they get into the spacecraft, they discover two things: (1) the
remains of human, apparently American astronauts, and (2) a huge, shimmering
gold ball, kinda like the one at Epcot Center. Soon, despite being warned
not to, Harry touches the sphere and gets sucked in for a few minutes. He
is then spat out apparently unharmed, but that's when it really hits the
fan.
And that, too, is when the movie breaks down. Up until the point of Harry's
adventure, it is interesting, relatively believable, and tight. But for
the remaining (interminable) 90 minutes of film, director Barry Levinson
seems to have dropped the ball (pun intended) and can't retrieve it. The
action moves in fits and starts, with moments of overblown terror interspersed
with boring passages of pointless squabbling between the crew. Each character
has faults that are identified and harped on ad nauseum by the others. There
are 20-minute scenes that appear to go nowhere. And the members of the crew
alternate between saving each other's lives and trying to kill each other.
To be fair, this fickle quality of the characters can be explained somewhat
by their individual experiences with the sphere, but the main problem here
is tempo. There is absolutely no reason for this film to be over 2 hours
long. There is (finally) a fascinating and well-edited climax, but the ending
is simplified to the point of being ridiculous.
This movie seems to be patterned somewhat after Alien, with the small crew whose confidence in themselves and each other is threatened by a horrific situation, but the difference is direction. In that 1979 classic, Ridley Scott had 5-minute scenes of silence that meant something. In Sphere, Levinson has 20 minute scenes of yammering that mean nothing. **