Sphere

A movie by Barry Levinson

With Dustin Hoffman, Sharon Stone, Samuel L. Jackson, Liev Schreiber, Queen Latifah and others

Monika says:

Psychologist Norman Goodman (Dustin Hoffman) is called to a plane crash site in the Pacific to attend to possible survivors. Only when he gets there he finds out that he is supposed to investigate a space ship that was hidden under corals on the ocean floor for 300 years. A team of experts, among them marine biologist Beth Halperin (Sharon Stone), astrophysicist Ted Fielding (Liev Schreiber) and mathematician Harry Adams (Samuel L. Jackson) is sent to a deep sea habitat.

Investigating the space ship they find a mysterious golden ball that captures the attention of the team. Inexplicable things happen in the habitat and to make matters worse the supply ships on the surface are forced to leave the area because of a storm so that the team is cut off from the outside world.

Contrary to most other movies made from Michael Crichton novels SPHERE closely follows the book. Therefore those who liked the book will also enjoy the movie. SPHERE is a longer than usual movie, but still doesn't quite do justice to the book. A number of loose ends that were tied up in the novel are not resolved in the movie. A blatantly obvious example are the corals that cover the ship. In the depth given in the movie there are no corals, but the book gives a reasonable explanation for the coral growth. In spite of the obvious shortcomings of the script SPHERE is one of the best screen adaptions of Crichton's novels so far.

One significant reason is the star-studded cast. Dustin Hoffman whose more recent movies were the media satires MAD CITY and WAG THE DOG plays psychologist Norman Goodman who accidentally has to explore the deep sea although he really is too old for this kind of mission. He is supposed to keep his fellow team members from "freaking out" which proves to be a difficult task given the unpredictable circumstances. Superfluous subplot: long time ago he had an affair with Beth who on top of everything else at the time suffered an identity crisis and thought about suicide. Of course Norman kept this from their bosses. What makes this subplot superfluous is that it doesn't contribute to the developement of the story and is detrimental to the part of Sharon Stone. Leaving out those passages of the movie would have tightened the plot and helped avoid the excessive length.

Mathematician Harry on the other hand would have made for an interesting character, but Samuel L. Jackson hardly gets to do anything in the movie. The way I see it his part was included only to follow the storyline of the book. Crichton seems to favor excentric mathematicians - another fact the movie doesn't do justice to.

The set of SPHERE ist just as obscure and spartan as you would expect from a movie that takes place mostly in a deep sea habitat. Too bad there weren't more scenes inside the actual space ship, but that would probably stretched the movie even more. In spite of those shortcomings SPHERE is a movie not only for Michael Crichton fans and well worth watching.

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Monika Hübner