Metacritic reviews

Using a twist on the ingenious premise of "Fantastic Voyage" -- miniaturized travel within a human body -- and a pair of very different but equally irresistible leading men, Innerspace is densely inventive and consistently hilarious. [1 July 1987, p.C1]

It doesn't have the dark edge of Joe Dante's other works, but brilliant performances by Martin Short and Meg Ryan make it a joy from start to finish.

The plot is standard fantasy-adventure pulp, though director Joe Dante (Gremlins, Explorers) has so many screwball things going on in it that the comedy all but overwhelms the formulaic line of action.

I would have loved to eavesdrop on the script conferences for "Innerspace." Here is an absurd, unwieldy, overplotted movie that nevertheless is entertaining - and some of the fun comes from the way the plot keeps laying it on.

Quaid is engagingly reckless and gung-ho as the pioneer into a new dimension, although he is physically constrained in his little capsule for most of the running time. Short has infinitely more possibilities and makes the most of them, coming into his own as a screen personality as a mild-mannered little guy who rises to an extraordinary situation.

The film is never inspired; it's not imaginative enough to be any more than an entertainingly good time. But it's an enormously unassuming, likable comedy, and surprisingly uninsistent for a big summer entertainment.

It takes great confidence to think of a second film before the first is even finished; either that, or it takes great nerve. In any case, Innerspace, which opens today at the Criterion and other theaters, has all the brashness of a hit, if not all the luster.

While the anatomical special effects are imaginative enough, the manic rather than magical tone fails to achieve the sense of awe that made Fantastic Voyage - clearly this film's inspiration - so fascinating.

Formulaic fun, helped by two winning leads.

Innerspace suffers from a problem afflicting many of this summer's movies: excess. First, it's too long. Then director Joe Dante (Gremlins) piles on the gadgetry and the inside-the-body special effects, and the movie buckles. [1 July 1987, p.D1]