Fantastic Voyage (DVD)

Time hasn't been kind to this movie. Your basic plot is for some reason the US Government want to operate on a defecting scientist who has been injured in an assassination attempt (I believe someone says he is able to make the shrinking process last longer than 60 minutes as an off the cuff remark) and the guy their sending doesn't want to go but has to anyway.

The crew is a Navy guy, the doctor who navigates (surely the surgeon could ...
...the surgeon & his assistant to do the operation and the guy for security. He's pointless too, plenty of things get sabotaged and not once does he manage to stop any of them. Then they all decontaminate and board the sub to be shrunk. Actually their shrunk twice and I still don't understand why this process couldn't have been done closer to the operating room.

They are shrunk, then put into a giant syringe (Donald Pleasance who is easily ... more

Time hasn't been kind to this movie. Your basic plot is for some reason the US Government want to operate on a defecting scientist who has been injured in an assassination attempt (I believe someone says he is able to make the shrinking process last longer than 60 minutes as an off the cuff remark) and the guy their sending doesn't want to go but has to anyway.

The crew is a Navy guy, the doctor who navigates (surely the surgeon could have done that as well negating the need for him?), the surgeon & his assistant to do the operation and the guy for security. He's pointless too, plenty of things get sabotaged and not once does he manage to stop any of them. Then they all decontaminate and board the sub to be shrunk. Actually their shrunk twice and I still don't understand why this process couldn't have been done closer to the operating room.

They are shrunk, then put into a giant syringe (Donald Pleasance who is easily the biggest star in the movie has a bout of cabin fever, tries to open the main hatch but it is prevented) and shrunk again. So clearly whatever the floor is made of in that room it's shrink proof. Oh, and the great goof "the ship is powered by a microscopic nuclear particle". Hang on, if the whole ship shrinks, surely that will shrink as well rendering it useless as a power source?

We gloss over the stunningly beautiful Raquel Welch many times who is ignored until shes wearing a skintight wetsuit and no bra. Yes, no bra. It's totally obvious she isn't wearing one and you have to be blind to not notice the scenes where she is definitely bra-less.

I do find it funny that such a high tech sub has to communicate using Morse Code, could they not afford a radio? Even though we are told they have 60 minutes in shrunk mode they never get to use those 60 minutes fully as they are not injected until 4 minutes have passed with them shrunk. Once injected into the body their problems start pretty much right away and they end up going off course due to a medical problem they hadn't previously detected.

They end up having to detour through the heart (but the heart can only be stopped for 60 seconds while they fly through) and also lose air meaning they have to refuel for air in the lungs (another good goof as the air molecules would be to big to fit in their ship) and then have to detour through the ear (I still really don't understand why that happens) and then finally reach the brain and the injury they are there to operate on with only 6 minutes to operate and escape. Donald Pleasance pointless argues and wastes more time doing so then jumps the Navy guy and tries to steal the ship to escape.

I'm not sure if we're supposed to think he's trying to kill the defector or that he's the person who sabotaged everything but he ends up getting killed by white corpuscles and both him & the ship are destroyed. To escape the remaining survivors make their way to the optic nerve and successfully escape. A weird ending as you never know if the operation was a success or not.

(this review also appears on dooyoo) 

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