A simple salesman in a shop, has to overcome one of the most dangerous criminals to save the life of a man who has been scaled down in a clandestine military experiment and inadvertently inserted it into his body through injections. The first experiment was to have a rabbit in the lab, I attacked things aborted, and brought him to that limit.
While the anatomical special effects are imaginative enough, the manic rather than magical tone fails to achieve the sense of awe that made Fantastic Voyage -- clearly this film's inspiration -- so fascinating.
Innerspace is a movie that sucks you in from the get-go, then keeps you hooked with the way it effortlessly moves from sci-fi to comedy to action, then back again.
Short has infinitely more possibilities and makes the most of them, coming into his own as a screen personality as a mild-mannered little guy who rises to an extraordinary situation.
While the sci-fi is pretty hard to fault for what it is, and the adventure is aces for a high-concept 1980s family movie, the comedy is awfully wan and reedy.
It has been made in a style best described as enthusiastic.
Washington Post
January 01, 2000
Innerspace is significant for one thing -- the establishment of Martin Short as the funniest new kid on the Hollywood block. Too bad that's not enough for the sensation-a-second makers of Innerspace.
Though the film plays like a mix of exhilarating adventure and smart comedy, it's deepened by the notion that little Quaid is floating around inside Short's body sinking hooks into things, ripping open veins, triggering stomach acid, and the like.
The plot is standard fantasy-adventure pulp, though director Joe Dante has so many screwball things going on in it that the comedy all but overwhelms the formulaic line of action.
