If Blast from the Past were any more irresistable it would be a puppy dog. The film, which I skipped over when it ran in cinemas last spring (as did most (foolish) moviegoers), makes for perfect rainy-afternoon viewing at home.

Brendan Fraser, who has been touted as the Next Big Thing for almost ten years now, is Adam Webber, a 35-year-old just getting his first glimpse of blue sky. In 1962, his father Calvin (Christopher Walken, playing his role as a kind of Ward Cleaver from outer space) sealed himself and his pregnant wife in a fallout shelter at the exact moment that an airplane crashed into his suburban abode. From the sound of the collision and the resultant heat above, Calvin presumed a nuclear bomb had detonated nearby, and the shelter's locks were timed accordingly: it would take three-and-a-half decades for the radiation from a blast to dissipate to non-toxic levels.

Adam is raised by his inventor father and homemaker mother, Helen (Spacek), alone. They school him in every conceivable subject--they even teach him how to dance. Adam grows up in a world without conflict (save the waning sanity of his mom--cabin fever has driven her to drink), without pollution, without...girls. (He subsequently develops idealized notions of love and marriage based on the illusion his parents maintain.)

We watch Adam blossom in the shelter in a series of vignettes. To be honest, I was a little sad to see him leave its confines, because there is much to love about this segment of Blast from the Past. The shelter is an appealing alternative universe, a land that time forgot. Normally, if a picture succeeds in making me nostalgic for an era I never lived through, I feel it has finished its work. In the case of Blast from the Past, that's only a third of the job. The thrust of the film is Adam's ascent to the surface after the shelter springs open and Calvin takes ill; too weak (and too frightened) to re-enter society, Adam's parents require more food and supplies to survive in their underground dwellings. Adam, armed with classic baseball cards worth thousands of dollars, is financially prepared for the task of collecting trucks full of rations, but what's really on his mind is finding a "non-mutant wife, preferably from Pasadena."

Adam instantly warms up to his fellow man, which doesn't necessarily make sense; sure, he'd be anxious to see other people besides Calvin and Helen, but would he be so gregarious with them? (There's no fear in his eyes.) He takes a special shine to Eve (Silverstone), the pawn shop employee who bails him out of a scam with her boss and is subsequently canned for it. She's a real sourpuss, and I can only assume that he falls in love with her because he's impatient. Eve left me feeling cold; the mechanics of the plot--no, the conventions of the genre--require her to reject Adam's old-fashioned come-ons--she just got out of a bad relationship, you see--until that big, climactic smooch. (I can't recall whether or not this kiss took place in the rain, though it's a good bet that it did.)

Then again, if it were love at first sight for Eve as well, the movie would have nowhere to go. The nineties equivalent of a Crocodile Dundee, Blast from the Past has a blessedly uncluttered plot, allowing Fraser's charms to take centre stage and stay there. There is joy to be had in seeing Adam negotiate our putrid modern world, even though the story does not break the mold of previous fish-out-of-water comedies. The film manages to surprises us, often: I did't expect, for instance, Adam to keep his previous life a secret--he blames his good manners and out-of-step social graces on being raised in Alaska. (Nor did I anticipate another character to quiz him on his supposed birthplace.)

Full of textured performances (in addition to Fraser, Walken, and Spacek, Dave Foley, late of the flamboyant "Kids in the Hall" troupe, is winning as a gay website designer) and more hit than miss gags (one exception: an embarrassingly vulgar sequence depicting Adam's first bus ride), Blast from the Past gave me a good chuckle or two and the warm-and-fuzzies all over.

Do I even need to bother praising the audio and video of Blast from the Past's DVD, given that it comes to us from New Line, home of the perfect video transfers? The RSDL disc contains both a widescreen (2.35:1, 16x9-enhanced) and a fullscreen version of the movie. The image quality of either is phenomenal; since Blast from the Past was shot in Super35, there is less top and bottom picture info on the letterboxed print and less side info on the standard print. I prefer the compositions of the letterboxed print, since they focus my attention on the actors. (I still vote to do away with the practice of making scope prints of Super35 movies, a Hollywood fad since The Abyss.) My only quibble about this near reference-quality transfer is its rendering of flesh tones, which sometimes appear too orange.

This movie will not give your 5.1 system a workout; nevertheless, it's a fine sound mix, especially during musical interludes (notably, a swing dance that proves Fraser is multi-talented). I expected a bit more low end during the plane crash, but one couldn't ask for more directionality during the succeeding lock-up of the shelter: you hear clicks and bangs all around.

While not a special edition, New Line has prepared fantastic, newsreel-age animated menus, and a "love meter" game that I played only once. (It awarded me--all too accurately, I might add--a "fizzler" score, very low on the meter.) A theatrical trailer (in 5.1 and anamorphically enhanced) plus cast and crew bios are also provided, along with a wealth of DVD-ROM content: the screenplay; web links; "bomb shelter" games (including trivia, bingo, and poker); printable swing dance steps; and even e-postcards.-Bill Chambers