Blast from the Past (PG-13)
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This came out in 1999, and I guess I saw it that same year. By the time I re-watched it in 2026, I didn't remember much beyond the premise, but I did end up liking it more than I remembered. Not that I remembered disliking it, but... I didn't remember liking it much. Anyway, the movie did not do well either financially or critically, which I think is a shame. It's not a great film, but I found it pretty entertaining, and I liked the main characters.

It begins in 1962, with a cocktail party, hosted by Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) and his wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek). We don't learn much about Helen, at first, other than that she's a pregnant housewife. But we do learn that Calvin is a somewhat eccentric genius who made a lot of money from his inventions. That's how he could afford to build a spacious fallout shelter beneath his house. During the party, a guest tells Calvin to turn on the TV, and they see news about the Cuban Missile Crisis. This prompts Calvin to end the party early, and take Helen down into the fallout shelter. At first, he only expects to spend a few days there, but then by a stunning coincidence, a malfunctioning fighter plane crashes into their house, and Calvin assumes it was a nuclear bomb. He believes it will take 35 years for the radiation to dissipate, so that's how long he and Helen must stay in the shelter.

We then see the years passing, as Helen gives birth and then she and Calvin raise their son, Adam. They teach him various things, like boxing, and dancing, and languages, and just about the world in general. Meanwhile, we also see what happens on the surface, in the spot where their house used to be. It began with a malt shop run by a woman and her son. Over the years, as the neighborhood went downhill, so did the malt shop, which underwent several changes over time, finally becoming... I dunno, Wikipedia calls it a "punk club", but by the 1990s, that's a bit too kind for what it becomes. I don't know what to call it. Eventually, things get so bad that the mother decides to quit, and gives the business to her son. (Wikipedia says his name is Melker, but I never heard that name in the movie, and I'm pretty sure the closing credits just called him "Soda Jerk".)

Finally, in the present day (presumably 1997), Calvin goes to the surface one night to check things out, expecting to find a post-apocalyptic wasteland, with perhaps a few survivors (possibly mutants). What he finds disturbs him greatly, and does nothing to persuade him that his expectations were wrong. Melker is still running the shop, but he looks like some kind of wild man, I dunno. And when he sees Calvin emerge from the floor, he thinks it's God. (Incidentally, I find it surprising that the elevator from the fallout shelter had doors on top that were strong enough to break through the foundation and the floor, but I guess that was just necessary for the story.) Anyway, Calvin returns to the shelter after seeing a bit of what has become of the neighborhood. Melker starts a cult devoted to "God", which we'll see every time someone uses the elevator (which Calvin told Melker to leave alone). Calvin doesn't want his wife or son going to the surface, but when he has a cardiac episode, Helen decides Adam (now played by Brendan Fraser) will have to go out for supplies... and to find a girl to marry and repopulate the world with non-mutants.

Adam soon finds a shop where he can sell his father's baseball card collection, which is now much more valuable than he expected. The shop's owner tries to cheat him, but an employee named Eve Rustikov (Alicia Silverstone) tells Adam what the cards are really worth, which gets her fired. And then, despite her better judgment, she agrees to give Adam a ride to a hotel. By this point, he doesn't know the way back home, but he's still determined to buy all the supplies his family needs, and he ends up hiring Eve to help with that. He also meets various people, including Eve's friend/roommate, Troy (Dave Foley), who is gay (but Adam just assumes that means "happy"). And he meets Eve's ex-boyfriend, Cliff (Nathan Fillion), who is a shallow jerk. And Eve and Troy take Adam out to a nightclub to help him find a girl. (There we see both his dancing lessons and boxing lessons come in handy.)

I don't want to spoil much more of the plot, but it's obviously inevitable that Adam and Eve will fall in love. (Eve tries not to, but Troy eventually convinces her of her feelings for Adam.) There is ultimately a happy ending for everyone. I felt especially glad for Helen finally getting to leave the shelter, which unlike Calvin, she had really not enjoyed being confined to for all those years. As for the depiction of modern society, looking back on the movie now, I have mixed feelings. The movie definitely shows how some things had gotten worse since the '60s (whether objectively, or in some cases just from the perspective of someone like Calvin). But it also shows the world being much better than the '60s in other ways, and a hell of a lot better than the Webbers anticipated. But I'm also kind of depressed by the fact that the world of the 1990s was in many ways a lot better than the world of the 2020s. I'm also not really sure how to feel about Calvin, as a character. He basically seemed like a good guy, but also paranoid, and he had a very 1960s attitude about "commies" (though that's not so different from a lot of people in the 2020s, I guess). I just feel like he's too stuck in a sort of prejudiced mindset. (And speaking of prejudice, there's one scene where Adam meets an African-American for the first time, which despite his good intentions, was a rather cringey scene. But at least it was short. And it could have gone a lot worse.) In general, though, Adam was a very sweet and somewhat naive character, and his upbringing made him seem odd in a lot of ways, by 1990s standards. But for the most part, I think he was likable, and it would be nice if more people in this world could be like him, in some ways. I also found Eve and Troy to be likable characters, in their own ways. Other than that, I can just say I found the movie reasonably amusing, and sweet, and oddly quirky. I feel like I should be saying more about it, and I may have forgotten things I wanted to say. It's all rather ridiculous, but somehow I feel like it works better than it has any right to.