We’re certainly happy to revisit this favorite in 4K … Joe Dante’s Sci-fi comedy taps several genres and styles for laughs, and comes up a winner in every regard. Astronaut Dennis Quaid is the pilot for a ‘Fantastic Voyage’- like journey into micro-minidom, but his micro-sub ends up in the bloodstream of Martin Short, a neurotic’s neurotic. Meg Ryan brings more Screwball comedy complications to the ensuing havoc with sinister conspirators Kevin McCarthy, Fiona Lewis and Robert Picardo. It’s like a Jerry Lewis comedy, but with attractive ILM visual effects.

Innerspace
4K Ultra HD
Arrow Video
1987 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 120 min. / Street Date April 28, 2026 / Available from Arrow Video / 59.99
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Martin Short, Meg Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Fiona Lewis, Vernon Wells, Robert Picardo, Wendy Schaal, Harold Sylvester, William Schallert, Henry Gibson, John Hora, Mark L. Taylor, Orson Bean, Kevin Hooks, Kathleen Freeman, Archie Hahn, Dick Miller, Kenneth Tobey, Joe Flaherty, Andrea Martin, Rance Howard, Chuck Jones, Charles Aidman.
Cinematography: Andrew Laszlo
Production Designer: James H. Spencer
Art Director: William Matthews
Costume Design: Rosanna Norton
Special makeup effects and designer: Rob Bottin
Visual Effects Supervisor: Dennis Muren
Film Editor: Kent Beyda
Composer: Jerry Goldsmith
Screenplay by Jeffrey Boam, Chip Proser story by Proser
Executive Producers Peter Guber, Jon Peters, Frank Marshall, Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg
Produced by Michael Finnell
Directed by Joe Dante

Joe Dante’s  Innerspace is a highly entertaining and consistently funny Sci-fi comedy, that is also a showcase of what optical special effects could achieve immediately before the computers took over. In the filmmakers’ commentary track, director Dante describes his movie as being like a Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin comedy, “if you shrunk Dino to the size of a germ and injected him into Jerry’s bloodstream.”  The result is funnier than any Martin-Lewis picture. Frank Tashlin would surely approve.

One big surprise is that Innerspace also plays like an old-fashioned ’30s screwball romance, with meet-cute scenes, witty dialogue and romantic relationships that depend on the charm of star personalities. Chip Proser and Jeffrey Boam’s screenplay comes up with some genuine star-making material. Troublemaking ex- astronaut Tuck Pendleton (Dennis Quaid) is the volunteer for an incredible, unbelievable, pretty-darn-impossible experiment. Along with a mini-submarine, he’s to be miniaturized and injected into the bloodstream of a lab rabbit. Unfortunately, when treacherous spies intervene, Tuck is hypo’ed into the reluctant rear of hypochondriac supermarket cashier Jack Putter (Martin Short). When Tuck initiates communications with Jack from inside, Jack interprets the disembodied voice as proof that he’s going crazy. With the spies in hot pursuit, Tuck must talk Jack into becoming a sci-fi secret agent, to set things right and get Tuck out in time to be reunited with his fiancée, Lydia Maxwell (Meg Ryan).

The raw concept might not sound very promising: Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage (1966) was a glossy, thoroughly-hyped Fox spectacle that all of us Junior High School kids thought was sophisticated until we grew up and saw it again. When filmmakers revisit old material like this, it’s frequently in the form of clunky remakes that miss the whole point of the original, like 1988’s  The Blob, or 1986’s  Invaders from Mars. Innerspace uses its incredible shrinking concept as a springboard, stretching its Sci-fi premise into a comedy hybrid with unlimited appeal.

Dante, Boam & Proser reinvent Fantastic Voyage as a wacky chase comedy. Dennis Quaid spends about nine-tenths of the film alone in the tiny submarine, floating inside the perfectly-cast Martin Short. Never was a comedian given a better showcase. Jack is a neurotic schlemiel who’s helpless in a crunch and hopeless with the woman he’d like in his life, his co-worker Wendy (the amusing Wendy Schaal).  The bizarre things that happen to Jack Putter permit Short to retain audience allegiance no matter how silly he behaves. If the direction wasn’t so strong, the show might seem an excuse for Short’s comedy bits, such as a ridiculous dance he does for one scene. It is a GREAT ridiculous dance. Due to Short’s innate charm and lack of pretension, what could be gratuitous mugging is instead high comedy.

Joe Dante excels at investing beloved genres with a quirky eccentricity, as in  The ‘Burbs. He can also make gleeful cynicism feel liberating  (Gremlins). Dante is one of few filmmakers in the ’80s to get seriously sentimental with teenage characters, in  Explorers and the later  Matinee. Here he’s got adults that behave like children. Tuck Pendleton’s apartment with its robots and Warner cartoon toys is a little odd, but the fresh smile of his girlfriend, charmer Meg Ryan, tides us over. We’re told that this was Meg Ryan’s first big leading movie role: I believe this is also where actors Ryan and Quaid came together as a couple.

Dante’s storytelling skills get a real workout. Tuck thinks he’s tooling around the bloodstream of a rabbit, according to the hilarious road map graphic on his control panel. He instead finds himself in a symbiotic relationship with his very nervous host, Jack. Tuck taps into Putter’s inner ear to be able to hear what Jack hears, and finds he can talk to him as well. Jack at first thinks he’s possessed, but his doctor (William Schallert) patiently explains that infernal demons talk through the people they possess, not to them. When Tuck clamps a video receiver onto the optic nerve, Jack’s pantomimed reaction is so good that we wince with pain as well.

The spy chase nonsense is mined for every bit of comedy potential. Hypodermic-wielding mad doctors Kevin McCarthy and Fiona Lewis are aided by stoic Vernon Wells and Mid-Eastern ‘cowboy’ Robert Picardo. Joe Dante mixes actors from his favorite old monster movies with more contemporary faces in his stock company: Dick Miller, Orson Bean, Archie Hahn, Henry Gibson, Kenneth Tobey, the wonderful Kathleen Freeman, Joe Flaherty and Andrea Martin. Frequent Dante DP John Hora does very well as a straight-man scientist. Robert Picardo is of course a standout, making an unpromising-sounding character into a riot. In one gratuitous yet very successful gag, some excuse is made to make Jack look just like Picardo’s cowboy character. For a few minutes, Picardo is playing Martin Short’s role. The screwball antics remain at a high pitch.

Clever technical inventions augment the fancy optical trickery. The interior shots of Short’s blood vessels are allowed to look rough and blurry, like something truly organic. Wonderful tricks are accomplished with forced perspective, and by things as simple as blowing compressed air in the actors’ faces.

Innerspace is longer than the average comedy. It has to be — taking anything out would wreck the continuity. I envy audiences that got to see Innerspace theatrically. Everybody loves this movie. I introduced it to my kids when they were young teenagers, and it was a memorable family experience, a riot of fun.

Arrow Video’s 4K Ultra HD of Innerspace really kicks this favorite up a few notches — most every setup sparkles, whether a fancy special effect, an angle on Meg Ryan or just a view of San Francisco scenery.

The release is billed as a new restoration from the original 35mm negative, approved by Joe Dante. It’s encoded with Dolby Vision and carries a battery of audio tracks, original and remixed. The visuals for the interior of the body still look terrific, rich with detail, even in dark shots. The soundtrack is particularly well mixed, with all of the director’s favorite Looney Tunes sound effects brightly billboarded.

Repeated from earlier discs is a marvelous director commentary. Rather than face down a microphone on his own, Joe Dante invited actor Kevin McCarthy and his producer Michael Finnell for a free-form gab session. As if in a Jack Benny radio show, Robert Picardo ‘drops in’ for a few minutes. Effects expert Dennis Muren gets involved too. The comments and jokes are hilarious.

Arrow has engineered a full list of new extras, including a second audio commentary by Drew McWeeny of  Formerly Dangerous. Also present is an entire new documentary and previously unseen behind-the-scenes video footage annotated by Joe Dante and Dennis Muren. It’s about 50 minutes of actors and crew clowning on the set, plus views of the production offices, model shop and shooting stages at ILM.

The documentary’s new interviews start the discussion with Joe Dante’s  Piranha. Producer Finnell helps Dante describe the way Innerspace came together. The credits are top-heavy overloaded with name producers, but the two moviemakers say they were allowed to work with very little interference. The show became a terrific career-booster for Meg Ryan, and Martin Short comes off as a supremely talented comic personality.

It’s certainly a fun ride, with nary a misstep along the way. Innerspace works first as a romantic comedy, which is odd for a picture pegged as a special effects showcase. I think it’s the best picture that Steven Spielberg exec produced and ‘presented,’ that he did not himself direct.

This package has no Blu-ray; viewers not set up for 4K UHD will want to order a  parallel Arrow Blu-ray release.

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Innerspace
4K Ultra HD rates:
Movie: Excellent
Video: Excellent
Sound: Excellent lossless 2.0 stereo, original 70mm 6-track mix in DTS-HD MA 4.1 surround and newly remixed Dolby Atmos audio
Supplements:
New audio commentary by Drew McWeeny
2015 audio commentary with Joe Dante, producer Michael Finnell, Kevin McCarthy, Robert Picardo, effects supervisor Dennis Muren
New 60-min documentary Shrinkage: The Making of Innerspace featuring new interviews with Dante, Finnell, Muren, visual effects artists Harley Jessup and Bill George and Robert Picardo
Previously unseen video footage Behind the Scenes with Joe Dante
Previously unseen video footage Behind the Scenes at ILM shot by Dennis Muren
Original storyboards, continuity and Behind the Scenes Polaroids
Production stills & Posters and Promo stills gallery
Theatrical trailer
Double-sided fold-out poster featuring original and new artwork
60-page insert booklet with writing by Charlie Brigden, Michael Doyle, Josh Nelson, Jessica Scott, Scott Saslow and Andrea Subissati, and more.
Deaf and Hearing-impaired Friendly? YES; Subtitles: English (feature only)
Packaging: One 4K Ultra HD in Keep case with book and poster in heavy card sleeve
Reviewed: April 8, 2026
(7498inne)

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