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March 16, 2005
Movie Review : Time Changer
The year is 1890. Professor Russell Carlisle (D. David Morin) has written a manuscript titled "The Changing Times" and has submitted it to the board at Grace Bible Seminary for their endorsement.
But one solitary member, Dr. Norris Anderson (Gavin Macleod), refuses to endorse the book when he reads that Carlisle is advocating the teachings of Jesus without mentioning Christ.
Finally, Dr. Anderson reveals that he has created a time machine, and propels Carlisle over a century into the future, where the world is taught morals without religion.
After a year of awful movies like Goldmember and Men in Black II, 2002's Time Changer may have been one of the funniest movies of the year. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be a comedy.
Under the direction of Rich Christiano, the movie showcases production values usually saved for instructional videos and infomercials. The cast is filled with B-actors, all of whom with the exception of Gavin Macleod seem to have phoned in their performance.
Don't be surprised if the acting in this movie actually makes you cringe. It's that bad. To be fair, the actors don't have much to work with. The script reads more like a sermon than a story, with preachy dialogue that doesn't seem to make any sense. Time after time, bit characters explain to Carlisle the reality of the world he's been transported to. At one point, shocked by a total strangers divorced status, the stranger tells him it's okay, that 1 in 2 marriages end in divorce these days. His response (and perhaps one of the funniest and most obvious lines of the movie): "1 in 2! That's 50 percent!"
Ultimately, Time Changer delivers an interesting message, and provokes thought. But it's a message that could be delivered in a matter of minutes, not hours, and in fact seems pretty obvious.
While we live in a secular world, the notion that Christians ought to teach morals in the name of CHRIST doesn't seem that far-fetched. Yet almost the entire board seems to roll over when Carlisle suggests that they do otherwise. Only Anderson raises any objections, and only later does he point out that this is because he has seen the future.
Shouldn't this concept be obvious to anyone who is teaching the word of Christ?
And for a movie that seems to teach that Christianity is more important that simple morality (Anderson chillingly tells us that you can be moral but if you haven't accepted Christ you will "go to hell"), the movie fails to present us with characters who walk the walk.
Along the way, Time Changer introduces us to characters like Eddie Martinez (Paul Rodriguez, actually turning in a good performance), who doesn't attend church, and doesn't know God, but is a moral man. He ends up befriending Carlisle, treating him fairly despite his odd appearance and mannerisms.
Meanwhile, the actual Christians in the film are all creepy. Two of them (for no apparent reason other than boredom) start following Carlisle, spying on him, looking up his background, and then confronting him in an alley, where Carlisle then proceeds to LIE to them and claim that they are about to witness the rapture.
The movie is filled with scenes that make no sense, and characters who appear to have no motivation.
I recommend this movie if you want a good laugh, but be prepared to see it in a theater with a dozen or so angry viewers; angry at you because they don't understand what's so funny. After you see the movie's preachy attack on the secular entertainment industry, you'll realize that Time Changer's clientele are so unexposed to quality filmmaking that they actually buy into the movie.
During one scene, Carlisle gives an uplifting and spirited speech to a group of churchgoers (who are supposed to be having a business meeting, but whatever.) But instead of nods and approval from the members, almost every one looks bored. And this isn't just bad acting... it's quite clear that the extras hired are plain bored (some of them are rolling their eyes or counting ceiling tiles) and they actually PUT IT IN THE MOVIE!
This scene is so hilarious that Jennifer and I simply had to bust up laughing, and were actually shushed... by someone who just minutes earlier had ANSWERED A PHONE CALL IN THE THEATER!!!
Should you wait for Time Changer to come out on DVD before you watch it? Oh, probably. But if you've got $8.50 to blow, and two hours to waste, go watch this film. It actually delivers a pretty intriguing message, if you can get past the preachy dialogue, ridiculous storyline, atrocious acting, and the occasional offensive concepts.
Posted by March at 12:19 AM | TrackBack
March 02, 2005
For a Good Cause?
Yesterday, fan site Save Enterprise announced that anonymous donors had pledged $3 million to save the canceled UPN show.
$3 million?!?
Wow. I've avoided speaking about this before now. I am, or was, a huge Star Trek fan. I loved The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. I own every one of the original movies. Star Trek VI is one of my favorite movies, period. But the people behind Star Trek really ran it into the ground. It shouldn't have been cancelled this year. It should have been cancelled six years ago! Voyager was a horrible mess. Enterprise was simply awful. The new season is marginally better. I would much rather watch Battlestar Galactica. Or for that matter Top Model.
To be fair, I'm really down on today's television shows. There isn't much that impresses me. Smallville has been awful this year. But Star Trek has been awful for a long time. Once upon a time, I watched faithfully, nearly every week. But those days are long gone. Today, I watch an occasional episode, but it's like watching a train wreck. There's something in me that wants to see the whole thing implode.
But along comes some very rich Trekkies who want to fund another season. Stupid. Star Trek is a television show. It is written by the people at Paramount. It is filmed and produced by people at Paramount. The actors are hired by Paramount. And it should be paid for by Paramount!
Star Trek wasn't run into the ground by a bad time slot. It didn't lose popularity because the fans had seen too much. It hasn't been cancelled because it's not profitable enough, or Paramount somehow can't pay for it. Star Trek is DEAD, Jim, because the people in charge produced pure junk and expected people to tune in. They kept producing the same show over and over again, for eighteen years straight, and they expected people not to notice. Are the plots for The Next Generation and Enterprise really any different? No, they aren't. And what may have worked brilliantly 18 years ago, well it's stale and boring now.
I know that Trek fans don't want their beloved show cancelled. For many fans, it's all they know. Trek has been on the air in one form or another for as long as some of them can remember. But it's just a TV show, and it's not a very good one at that. The people who ran this idea into the ground do NOT DESERVE $3 million! They don't deserve any donation of any sort. They have made millions, maybe billions, off of Trek fans. They have sold us movie tickets, DVDs, VHS tapes, t-shirts, models, toy figures, Christmas ornaments, and the list goes on. I once owned a set of 10 Star Trek PLATES! And you know what? Some sucker bought them for a few hundred dollars!!!
And even when the product turned bad, fans remained faithful. They kept watching, because it had to turn around... it just had to. But it didn't.
So people like me stopped supporting the product. I went to see Star Trek 10 in the theaters. It was the TNG cast, after all. But it was horrible. Maybe it wasn't the worst ever, but after they threw up ADMIRAL Janeway on the screen, I couldn't take it anymore. That was the very reason I had stopped watching Star Trek. But the powers that be were blissfully unaware of the stinking pile of poo that the "franchise" had become.
And they're still unaware. If we give them $3 million, we're only supporting a show filled with cliched writing, poor acting, and a horrible premise. They don't need $3 million. They don't deserve $3 million.
If you really want to save Star Trek, don't donate $3 million to save Enterprise. Enterprise is the problem, not the solution. Sometimes something has to die to be reborn. It's time to let Star Trek die.
Don't you think you could come up with something BETTER to do with your $3 million dollars. I can think of a lot of things, and they don't involve giving more money to an already well-paid cast and crew. As if Scott Bakula needs our charity.