Fantastic Voyage

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What’s the Story?

After an attempted assassination by USSR operatives, the only scientist with the technology to successfully "miniaturize" matter is left comatose. The CIA and the Pentagon use the limited technique to save him by repairing his blood clot from within. They shrink a team of doctors and navigators who travel intravenously on a cell-sized submarine to destroy the clot through surgical laser. The catch: they have but one hour to complete the mission and get out before the miniaturization process reverses. If the voyagers and their submarine enlarge, the body's immune system will respond and attack.

Is It Any Good?

A product of its era, this is a trippy film, with a colorful, psychedelic set design full of blobby globs and jellyfishy molecules. It provides a vivid opportunity for kids to get an up-close and very magnified view of biological processes and get jazzed about physiology and anatomy. While there's the suspense of a ticking clock, and danger around every arterial corner, this movie is still more of a travelogue; a tour of strange and wondrous foreign country.

The idea that this otherworldly world is right under one's skin is indeed mind-blowing, but the excitement of the concept subsides thanks to a fairly shoddy script and no character development. The action is also tame and slowly paced by today's standards, hindered by a long set-up and much discussion about the complex shrinking procedure that's meant for the die-hard sci-fi buff. There's definitely a campiness factor that parents will enjoy, particularly the first screen appearance of Raquel Welch as a science-minded surgeon's assistant in a skin-tight scuba suit.