Video Discription |
In 1962, eccentric American scientist Dr. Calvin Webber (Christopher Walken) believes nuclear war with the Soviet Union is imminent, and builds a secret fallout shelter beneath his backyard. Alarmed by the Cuban Missile Crisis, Calvin takes his pregnant wife Helen (Sissy Spacek) into the shelter. When a fighter jet loses control and crashes into the house, Calvin assumes the worst and activates the shelter’s time-locks for 35 years.
Helen gives birth to Adam, who is immersed in culture up to 1962, including TV reruns of I love Lucy and The Honeymooners and listening to Perry Como and Dean Martin. A diner is built above the shelter, where Melcher (Joey Slotnick) works for Mom (Dale Raoul) as a soda jerk. The diner becomes a pub as the suburban neighborhood deteriorates throughout the decades into an inner city ghetto. Mom eventually gives the pub to Melcher; by 1995, he is an alcoholic living in its abandoned remains.
When the shelter unlocks in 1997, Calvin mistakes the blighted neighborhood for a post-apocalyptic wasteland of irradiated mutants), and decides the family must stay underground. With supplies running out and Calvin falling ill, Adam (Brendan Fraser) leaves the shelter for the first time. He meets Melcher, who encountered Calvin the previous night, bursting through the floor in his radiation suit; Melcher now worships Calvin and the elevator. Marveling at the outside world, Adam purchases supplies, but cannot remember his way back to the pub.
Trying to sell his father's classic baseball cards at a hobby shop, Adam meets Eve Rustikoff (Alicia Silverstone). She stops the store owner (Bill Gratton) from cheating Adam, and is fired. Eve drive Adam to a Holiday Inn in exchange for a rare card, but returns the next morning out of guilt. Adam asks her to help purchase supplies and, unaware of the value of money, agrees to her request for $1,000 a week. He also asks Eve to help him find a wife from Pasadena, California, per his mother's advice, who is "not a mutant". Adam meets Eve's gay housemate and best friend Troy (Dave Foley), who provides him with advice and a fashion makeover.
Eve and Troy take Adam to a 1940s swing-style nightclub to find him a wife. Adam attracts the attention of several women, including Eve's nemesis Sophie (Carmen Moré). Jealous, Eve reconnects with her ex-boyfriend Cliff (Nathan Fillion), who goads Adam into an altercation, relenting when Adam demonstrates his boxing skills, having trained every day with his father; Eve leaves. Troy returns home and explains Adam went home with Sophie. Adam returns, explaining that he politely rejected Sophie's advances, as he could only think about Eve. He and Eve kiss, but when Adam admits the truth about his past and his desire to take her to be his wife "underground", she asks him to leave.
Finding the pub, where Melchor preaches to a full congregation, Adam returns to Eve's house, where she is waiting with Dr. Nina Aron (Jenifer Lewis) and her assistant to have him committed. Initially cooperating, Adam escapes, asking Eve and Troy to collect his things and pay his hotel bill. In his hotel room, Troy and Eve find toiletries and clothing from the 1960s and absurdly valuable stocks in companies like IBM, and realize that Adam was telling the truth.
As Melcher and his cult load supplies into the shelter, Calvin prepares to seal his family inside again. Eve spots Adam outside the pub; they embrace, and Adam takes her to meet his parents. Impressed with Eve, Calvin and Helen agree to set the shelter’s locks for two months while Adam and Eve make arrangements.
During this time, Adam and Eve sell the stocks to build his parents a new home in the country, identical to their house that was destroyed, including a restored red 1960 Cadillac convertible. They help Melcher rebuild the pub into a 50s-themed nightclub after convincing him that Adam is not God.
Adam reveals there was never an atomic war and the Soviet Union collapsed. Unconvinced, Calvin plans to build a new fallout shelter, as Eve plays with her engagement ring. [i5UEu_9Gdu8] |