Parenting & Family Quote by Tom Berenger

Berenger’s gripe lands because it’s less a takedown of one movie than a small manifesto from an actor who came up when star power still pretended to be in service of story. He’s not scolding spectacle on principle; he’s mocking the assembly-line feeling of late-90s Hollywood, where “action things” arrive with the inevitability of fast food. The jab at Lost in Space isn’t really about space. It’s about movies that look expensive and feel thin, where performers aren’t inhabiting a world so much as sprinting through a VFX obstacle course.

“A bunch of good actors running around shooting at special effects on a soundstage” is a precise insult: it frames effects as the co-star and the set as a lie everyone is forced to politely ignore. The phrase “good actors” matters, too. He’s defending craft while implying craft is being wasted, reduced to reaction shots and physical business stitched together in post. That’s a complaint actors often make privately; Berenger says it aloud, and the candor is the point.

The “acid trip” line does double work. It’s funny, sure, but it’s also the only language that fits an experience designed to overwhelm the senses while bypassing coherence. Even the detail about taking his kids sharpens the edge: he’s the captive consumer, dutiful parent turned unwilling test subject. Underneath the joke sits a wider anxiety about a culture pivoting from movies as performances to movies as products, where the audience is asked to applaud the software.