Fraser is a man out of time. That's both a description of his star quality and the premise of Blast from the Past, a time-warped romantic comedy that's now a quarter-century removed from its release.
Fraser plays Adam, a well-preserved 35-year-old man who has been raised in an elaborate bomb shelter after his eccentric father (Christopher Walken) mistakenly believes California is under nuclear attack in 1962. Three and a half decades later, when the radiation has supposedly cleared, Adam ventures out into late-'90s Los Angeles with the chipper naiveté and innocent value system of his well-meaning parents. (Sissy Spacek plays his notably less eccentric mother.)
The obvious tactic in 1999, in the wake of The Brady Bunch Movie, is to form a stark contrast between the product of a 1962 not-quite-nuclear family and the cynicism of the '90s.
That's not completely removed from what Blast from the Past does, but Fraser's presence complicates matters (or possibly complements a witty yet slightly confused screenplay). Adam's whole persona as illustrated by the movie should be a muddle. He's born in the shelter in 1962, maintains a jeepers-golly affect that's more broadly associated with a 1950s sitcom, and later cuts an impressive rug at a 1940s-themed dance club.
This is probably realistic – as far as lighthearted comedies about families stuck in bomb shelters go – in that Adam's parents would have gone dancing in the '40s, adopted the values of '50s suburbia, and lived just far enough into the '60s to get a little freaked out by encroaching cultural changes.
Still, as a clean high concept, it invites confusion, especially for its actors: Which decade's stereotypes are we supposed to be playing again? (For that matter, older first-time parents in 1962 might well, in a cultural vacuum, pass along 1930s values to their young son.) As a vehicle for Fraser, though, this amalgamation is ideal, because the actor doesn't project to particular it was. He seems like he should, right? It's easy to picture him as a handsome lummox in a '40s noir, and the scene shifts to a slapstick comedian in a '60s comedy. In his current career, he's been a comfortable fit in plenty of modern productions, and he makes a fine 1920s-era adventurer in the Mummy series; his first big year as an actor had him playing a student in 1959, and also an unfrozen cave man. He is equally convincing in both. (Well, possibly slightly more so as the latter.)