oung Danny (Bobo) is being ignored by his older brother, Walter (Hutcherson). Walter picks on his brother and blames him for their parents' divorce. Walter also resents his young sibling coming between him and his father (Robbins). So when Danny finds a unique board game in the basement of their house, he begs his brother to play it with him. Soon they find out, however, that the game has launched their house into outer space.
The game is an old tin game with a mechanical spinner that makes miniature rocketships move across the board. Then a card pops out that presents instructions and makes things happen. Those things can include freezing their sister (Stewart) for five turns while she's upstairs getting ready for a date. Her frozen form falls down the stairs, and they put her back before she thaws.
The boys have more trouble to contend with when a dysfunctional robot invades their home and crashes through doors on a rogue mission to destroy Walter. Then a lost astronaut (Shepard) is pulled in from space after coming through a wormhole, which he calls a "time sphincter." This mysterious time-traveling stranger is also a "victim" of the game, and he knows the ropes of this odd space flight and the creatures they may encounter along the way.
So when flesh-eating Zorgons board the house in search of meat, the astronaut lets them know how to avoid the monsters. And when the older sister thaws out, she becomes strangely attracted to the astronaut, saying that she feels unusually safe with him. The boys are frightened of the game and fear playing it any more, but they eventually figure that it may be their only way to get home.
Life is just a spin of the tin
The kids who play the brothers are fine child actors who seem as if they really are related. Bobo is particularly cute and amazingly adept at expressing surprise, fear and disappointment with each spin of the wheel. The special effects, thanks to Stan Winston and his team, are a clever mix of costumes, models and computer graphics. The big monstrous renegade robot with a slight defect doesn't look like it could possibly be a man in a suit, but it is, and the skinny legs and arms are designed to create the unusual effect. The Zorgons are giant, goofy lizardlike space travelers who are clumsy and bump into each other when they walk. They're scary but ultimately not threatening. The Zorgon ship has freaky things on it, like goats with eyes that bug out of their heads—four eyes.
Favreau has mellowed out with his relationship-oriented films, and he says it's because he has children now, but he knows how to tell a family story with some laughs and do it with an edge. He did it very well with Elf, and this film has enough adult humor in it to be as enjoyable for parents as for kids. Robbins as the dad doesn't have much of a role, but Shepard is charming, funny and unpredictable—although not quite as wild and wacky as he is in the MTV series Punk'd.
There are frightening moments that would make anyone jump. The meteor showers that burn through the roof of the house make a very exciting opening to the space travel as the boys and their hamster dodge the flames.
Don't look at the story for any SF logic. Why does Shepard's character have a space suit while the boys don't need anything in their windowless ship? Why does the couch continue to burn when they throw it out in open space? And do any of the time-travel explanations make sense? Don't over-analyze the plot; even the science logic won't make sense to a fourth grader. But there are some charming logical moments in the film, like the bicycle that always seems to orbit the house in space and stays with the family throughout the movie.
