BOMB-SHELTER COMEDY MISFIRES ONCE ABOVE GROUND.

Byline: Glenn Whipp Daily News Film Critic

It's October 1962. Cuban Missile Crisis. Nutty professor Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) and his pregnant wife, Helen (Sissy Spacek), are throwing a swinging cocktail party when JFK comes on television and informs the nation of the dire situation. The guests put down their martinis and Rob Roys long enough to absorb the news, and Calvin abruptly calls the evening to an end.

``I think we need to keep a prayerful watch-and-wait stance,'' he intones grimly.

Calvin, though, has ideas that go way beyond watching and waiting. Underneath his kitschy suburban tract home, Calvin has built the world's most elaborate bomb shelter, equipped with a supermarket-style food storage room, trout farm and lawn chairs that look up to a blue concrete sky. Once his guests leave, Calvin ushers Helen underground and closes the hatch to wait for news.

Then a funny thing happens. A jet fighter plane crashes into the Webbers' San Fernando Valley home, completely destroying it. Down in the shelter, Calvin and Helen hear the explosion and mistake it for the end of the world. Ever vigilant, Calvin activates the safety mechanism on the shelter's doors, locking them for 35 years. (``By then the radiation will have dissipated and we'll be safe,'' he says.)

That's the setup for ``Blast From the Past,'' a halfway decent comedy that's funny and inventive as long as it keeps its sensibility rooted in the Cocktail Culture. But once the Webbers' son grows up (Helen gives birth to a boy in the shelter) and leaves his Cold War cocoon for supplies, the movie becomes standard fish-out-of-water fare, losing most of its appeal in the process.

The Webbers' son, Adam (Brendan Fraser, doing another variation of the wide-eyed innocent from ``George of the Jungle'' and ``Still Breathing''), ventures into the 1990s world with a 1960s sensibility. So while rap music blares all around him, straight-arrow Adam whistles along with Perry Como. While others strike cynical poses, Adam is unabashedly optimistic and trusting. And while a street-smart young woman, named, naturally enough, Eve (Alicia Silverstone), spends her time angry about the past, Adam is simply happy to have a future that includes the possibility of a girlfriend. (Guess who?)

``Blast From the Past'' works best when it's down in the bunker, spoofing Calvin's Cold War paranoia and cleverly imagining what 35 years underground would do to a family. But once the film enters the present day, it runs out of energy and ideas. The screenplay, by director Hugh Wilson and Bill Kelly, doesn't clash Adam's basic decency with today's culture in any interesting or creative ways. Fraser is left to basically speak VERY LOUDLY and wonder why other people think he's weird.

Likewise, the romance between Adam and Eve is as formulaic as the selection of their names. Another subplot, involving the owner of the property directly over the bomb shelter, is irritating and stupid and takes the movie nowhere.

Fraser remains an appealing and gifted performer, but he has had better material before. Silverstone displays little of the charm that made her so captivating in ``Clueless.'' Much better is Dave Foley, Eve's gay roommate who engagingly helps Adam make sense of the modern world. Unfortunately, the filmmakers didn't have a similar presence to help them add a little more fun and originality to this disappointing film.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Blast From the Past'' (PG-13; brief language, references to sex and drugs).

The stars: Brendan Fraser, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Walken, Sissy Spacek, Dave Foley.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Hugh Wilson. Screenplay by Wilson and Bill Kelly. Released by New Line Cinema.

Running time: One hour, 46 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and one half stars.

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Photo

Photo: Ryan Sparks, as a very young Adam, left, Sissy Spacek and Christopher Walken call a bomb shelter home sweet home in the comedy ``Blast From the Past.''