A review by Mike Shea Movie Rating: ( 0) DVD Rating: ( * * * * · )
The short: Run. The long: Take all the boring water works of Abyss and all the lame scary dream shit from Event Horizon and you have Sphere. The only cool part of this movie is the sphere itself which lasts about 10 seconds. The rest is a patchwork of the worst dialog I have listened to with all the stereotypical charactors we have seen in other movies starring the same folks (Casino, Wag the Dog, Pulp Fiction). Half the movie is the commander yelling "Can you hear me!?" into a mic while his folks get bombarded with giant squid eggs. Of course it did bring one of the largest and most talented actresses to hit the screen out into our eyes again. Yep, you guessed it. Queen Latifa herself holds this sparse little known cast (Dustin Hoffman, Samual Jackson, Sharon Stone) to a new level of acting talent. I mean, what the hell? Were there already too many rap artests in Anaconda to stick her in the belly of a big snake? I have an easier time believing that Pamela Anderson Lee is a friggin superspy/bodyguard than I do believing that Queen Latifa is a millitary sub commander who says stuff like "I have to go reset the sub" and "AAAAAHHHH!! JELLYFISH!! AAAAAHHHH!!". And where the hell were the effects? The boat gets attacked by the squid from 20 thousand leagues under the sea and all we get is a huge squid like blip on an ociliscope and a lot of camera shaking. Not even one friggin suction cup. All I wanted was a big friggin tenticle to come and take Queen Latifa back to MTV (whoops, she is already dead. Who could tell?) and all I get is a horrible "catch me I am falling" scene with Hoffman and Stone wrestling over a green lever. Ok, enough of this. The DVD is another Warner winner. Except for the sound being very hissy in one scene in particular, it was top notch. 16x9 enhanced, 5.1 Dolby Digital, commentary track and featurette. Still I would wish this disc on my worst enemy.