A mad scientist and his pregnant wife (Christopher Walken and Sissy Spacek) retreat to their fallout shelter during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 35 years later, their now adult son Adam (Brendan Fraser) leaves his sheltered upbringing.

Brendan Fraser carved out a weird niche in the ’90s playing frozen cavemen (Encino Man) and feral wildmen (George of the Jungle) supplanted into modern-day civilised society. While similar on the surface, Blast From the Past is really the other way round; a man raised with the politeness and civility of the 1950s, thrust into the wild debauchery of the 1990s.

This makes for a distractingly reactionary comedy, with Walken’s character emerging in late-90s LA convinced that they have indeed survived nuclear armageddon; a clever joke immediately soured by his assuming a trans person he meets is a “mutant”. The film blasts you with the unacceptable stench of the 1980s, until you remember it’s actually from 1999. That’s the same year as The Matrix.

Of course the apple doesn’t Fall far from the tree, and Adam is soon having equally hilarious interactions with black people. He falls in love with the first woman he sees that he doesn’t accidentally racially abuse, whose name just so happens to be Eve (Alicia Silverstone). After initially paying her to hang out with him, Eve eventually falls in love with his conservative ways. Also he becomes a millionaire.

A culture clash between the 1962 family and Adam’s modern-day friends would make comedic sense, but every character is a mouthpiece for the movie’s political agenda, positioning the ’90s as a culture of “sluts” and divorce. And Eve’s stereotypical gay best friend (Dave Foley) adds insult to injury; inevitably Troy has no life of his own, allowing him to devote all his time to helping the straight couple.

In fact the only element that subverts the notion that everything was better in the past is Adam’s mother (a brilliant Sissy Spacek) driven to alcoholism by being forced to live for decades as a 1950s housewife. But Adam is the hero, and the movie fails to interrogate the idea that the past was actually only better for the rich white men, and not the women or gay people who make up two of the three main characters.

Blast From the Past is too busy extolling the virtues of the nuclear family (literally) to care for its stale romance or fish-out-of-water comedy. It is ironic that a film from the ’90s about the lost values of the ’50s should feel so much a relic of the ’80s.