Friday, January 23, 2009

Oscar Nominations Are Out!

The Oscar nominations are finally out. This year was a little different as they are normally announced on a Monday. Since it was MLK Day and Obama's inauguration was Tuesday, they decided Thursday was the best bet. Holding off until the following Monday would have put it to close to the end of January. Please gander at some of the noms and remember you can get a full list and a printable ballot at:

http://www.oscar.com

Best Picture
The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
Milk
The Reader
Slumdog Millionaire


Best Actor In a Leading Role
Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
Sean Penn (Milk)
Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon)
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)
Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)


Best Actress In A Supporting Role
Amy Adams (Doubt)
Penelope Cruz (Vicky Cristina Barcelona)
Viola Davis (Doubt)
Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)
Marisa Tomei (The Wrestler)


Best Actress In A Leading Role
Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
Angelina Jolie (Changeling)
Melissa Leo (Frozen River)
Meryl Streep (Doubt)
Kate Winslet (The Reader)


Best Actor In A Supporting Role
Health Ledger (The Dark Knight)
Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt)
Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)
Josh Brolin (Milk)


Best Director
Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
David Fincher (The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button)
Stephen Daldry (The Reader)
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon)
Gus Van Sant (Milk)

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Ray Dennis Steckler Dead at 70

Independent filmmaker Ray Dennis Steckler, who is known for such cult classic titles as Rat Pfink a Boo Boo (1966), Wild Guitar (1962), The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living And Became Mixed-Up Zombies (1964) and The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid-Row Slasher (1979), passed away Wednesday, January 7th, in Las Vegas at the age of 70.






Bad Movie Night feature: Treasure of the Four Crowns

On January 15, My Bloody Valentine 3-D will be premiering in theaters across the country. This is a remake of the original 1981 film of the same name, which was released back in the days before NC17, when horror films were threatened with the financially disastrous "X" rating for violent content. The original actually had to cut nine minutes to receive an "R" rating.

It is only fitting that My Bloody Valentine's return to the big screen be released in wondrous three-dimensional vision. When it was released in '81, not only did the plot closely resemble the formula introduced by Friday the 13th, but the events that take place in the film actually occur on the same date. MBV did not do well, and the following year Jason came back with Friday the 13th Part 3 - in 3-D. History might be ready to repeat itself once again, though, as a remake of the original Friday the 13th is due out next month.



Not to be outdone, this weekend's Bad Movie Night will be featuring a 3-D film of it's own, the stupendously horrendous Treasure of the Four Crowns!

It is hard to make the claim that any 3-D film is the worst one ever made. The competition for that honor is pretty steep indeed. Besides the previously mentioned Friday the 13th sequel, other contenders include Jaws 3 in 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. That's only a few of the modern 3-D resurgence titles, and already the race is too close to call. However, it can safely be said the Treasures would easily make a top five list.

Advertised as being filmed entirely in "WONDER-VISION" (apparently a fancy name for the Polarization 3-D process) and "SUPER-VISION" (one "Wonders" if this film would have benifitted from more competent adult "Supervision"), Treasure of the Four Crowns features the last screen performance of Tony Antony, probably the most ludicrous action star of the eighties. Tony's role as the Indiana Jones inspired treasure hunter J.T. Striker is enhanced by his ability to convey four virtually realistic expressions; stoic, amused, startled, and just-violated-with-a-cattleprod. In the film, he assembles a motley crew of washed-up treasure-hunting rejects (a startlingly effective plot device repeated throughout the eighties, known by many as the "A-Team Effect") in order to rescue two of the mystical gems of the Four Crowns (of which only three are mentioned) from the clutches of the evil cult leader Brother Jonas, who presumedly bears no relation to The Jonas Brothers.

J.T. Striker's journey is wrought with the kind of in-your-face peril that only 3-D moves dare to explore. Not only do must he and his redubbed motley crew dodge snakes, swords, steel rods and columns of fire; they also find themselves surrounded by barking dogs, vicious turkey-vultures, uncoiling ropes, seltzer sprays, telescoping display cases, and the deadliest floating magical key (complete with amazingly visible strings) ever depicted in a three-dimensional format.



Treasure of the Four Crowns used to play repeatedly on SHOWTIME when I was a child. Even at a young and tender age, I knew that this film was not to be considered "good" by any stretch of the imagination. Yet I couldn't bear to miss it when it was on, and could barely look away. Over twenty years later, I am still mesmerized by this film. My only regret is that I have never seen it in it's 3-D glory. Let us up that My Bloody Valentine's new 3-D reincarnation jump-starts a new wave of nostalgia and encourages a remastered DVD of this timeless, worthless classic.



Saturday, January 10, 2009

Bad Movie Night Nominee: VICE SQUAD!

Pimps. Bums. Cops. Dealers. Hookers. Hustlers. Murderers. Strippers. Muggers. Transvestites. Actors. Superman. These are just some of the obstacles you might face if you choose to walk the street of Hollywood, California at night. That's when the Hollywood VICE SQUAD patrols the streets.

80's cop films are a genre of bad movie all to themselves. Even the good ones, like Fort Apache, The Bronx, don't hold up too well under scrutiny. Vice Squad is one of the gems of the time period. Filmed live on the street of Hollywood land, it gives an unflinchingly grim view of the city that was usually reserved for New York. Every parked car, litter-strewn alley, graffiti-covered storefront, and slime-filled gutter is captured in its own natural habitat. The prostitutes might have been shipped in from Seattle, but everything else is 100% the City of Dreams.


Not to be confused with Police Squad! (although it might actually be funnier), Vice Squad is the touching tale of a series of gruesome murders, an out-of-work actress, her suspended boyfriend cop, a psychotic pimp, and his beloved 'Hos'. There's a lot more to the story, but if you stray to far from the sex and violence, it gets a little confusing. Best not to stray too far from the death and degradation.

One of the highlights of Vice Squad (besides the bad acting and over-the-top sex and drugs exploitation that almost makes it a Caucasian Shaft) is professional television "Special Guest Star" Wings Hauser. Hauser not only performed as the badass pimp 'Ramrod' during night shoots while starring in The Young and the Restless during the day, but he also sang the song NEON SLIME that plays over the opening and end credits. This was decades before Chuck Norris would sing his own theme song on Walker, Texas Ranger (which Hauser has also appeared on as a "Special Guest Star").



Just watch this trailer and ask yourself: is this film worthy of Bad Movie Night?



Friday, January 9, 2009

Celebrate Bad Movie Month with Bad Movie Night!

As the creators of This Movie Sucks, we (Joey and Scott, the two goofy looking guys in the title picture) have a traditional gathering that we like to hold four or five times a year. Being unrepentant bad movie fans, we like to host an event we call, simply...

BAD MOVIE NIGHT!

We simply invite a bunch of friends, host a friendly get together with refreshments and comfortable seating, then relentlessly expose them to some of the worst cinematic blunders we can get our hands on. We've lost a few friends in the process, but the expressions on their faces were worth it.

This year, we were inspired by this January's horrendous lineup. January, as most film fanatics know, is where films are send to die a silent, unloved death. At the end of every year, film distributors line up the features that they know are going to offend and repel audiences like a pile of rotting otter corpses, and dutifully march them off into the Elephant Graveyard of movies, the slowest money-producing month of the entire year. Yes, January is where bad films go to die.

In celebration of this years abysmal New Year Box Office choices, Joey fearlessly forged through the databases and culled a list of every film ever sentenced to a theatrical release in January. From there, we selected a couple dozen of the worst and most entertaining of the bunch, and researched their availability and pain factor for possible inclusion in this year's first Bad Movie Night.

Over the next week, we will be posting titles and synopsis, as well as movie trailers and film clips, of the films currently nominated as potential Bad Movie Night screeners. We hope you take a look and weigh in with your own comments.

But no matter what you do, don't bother trying to talk us out of it. We're way beyond the point of rational thought.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Bad Movie Review: A Sound of Thunder

Director Peter Hyams is no rookie when it comes to bad films. He has made more than his fair share. The best that can be said is that he’s an average director capable of decent work. His films range from acceptable (Outland and 2010: The Year We Make Contact) to forgettable (The Star Chamber and Narrow Margin) and occasionally regrettable (Timecop, Sudden Death, The Relic, End of Days). None of his past films, however, reach the level of cinematic atrocity that A Sound of Thunder manages to achieve.

Since ASOT is bad far beyond what Hyams is notorious for, a forgiving viewer might want to believe that the cause of their pain is a troubled production. If you can manage to make it through to the end credits, you’ll see a few indicators that this is a distinct possibility. Five different screenwriters are credited, as are five different producers, and seven (!) executive producers. Add these numbers to a budget topping $80,000,000, and you have a clear cut recipe for disaster.

That’s right, count those zeros again. Eighty million dollars. Where did the money go? How does a film in this day and age consume that much money and not turn out a single impressive special effect? A college student with a Mac Book Pro could turn out better effects than what is showcased here. Just look at other CGI-heavy films also released in 2005, and their respective budgets: Sin City/$40Million, Serenity/$39Million, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy/$50Million. The three Lord of the Rings films, made four, three, and two years prior with older technology, managed amazing effects at only $13Million more per feature. Yet A Sound of Thunder burns through $80Million, and they still end up with computer graphics that Thunderbirds-style puppetry would have improved upon.

Considering the amount of screen time it received, a huge chunk of the budget must have gone towards the computer rendered (futuristic) street backgrounds, featuring (futuristic) city streets studded with (futuristic) CGI street lights and crossing signs and teaming with (futuristic) CGI cars. Apparently, enough of the budget went to these painfully unrealistic backdrops that they tried to squeeze every possible dollar from them. Thus, in the first act of the film, there are no less than three lengthy walking-and-talking dialogue scenes, effectively dragging down the pace of the film in order to showcase the over-priced special effects. The filmmakers were at least smart enough to try and kill two birds with one stone, as most of the fake walking scenes are used to absorb some of the ungodly amount of exposition-heavy dialogue (more on that later). The drawback to this solution is that it is hard to concentrate on the dialogue when you are constantly distracted by the poor quality of the backgrounds and the ridiculous actors-pretending-to-walk shuffle.

All of this bitching about computer graphics is beside the point. A decent script with good dialogue and a strong story can always overcome crappy effects. Most the films that came out of the 80’s prove this. Unfortunately, this lame production’s screenplay offers as much support as a rubber crutch.

The setup is simple enough. Rich douche bag Charles Hatton (Oscar winner Sir Ben Kingsley) is the owner of Time Safari, a company that sends other rich douche bags (wearing futuristic business suits) back in time 65 million years to hunt dinosaurs. Charles Hatton is apparently smart enough to be a self-made billionaire, yet not creative enough to come up with a better name for his company than Time Safari. The idea of a private company being allowed to rent out, let alone own, such technology is explained away with the presence of a single government official monitoring the operations. Considering how the government has been run in the real world lately, this is probably the most plausible element of the film.

The handsome, competent, and rebellious Travis Ryer (Ed Burns, whose sole direction must have consisted of “Look good, and occasionally concerned.”) leads the hunting expeditions, which are a bit of a scam. The millionaires who pay for the honor of slaying a T-Rex can only fire when Ryer’s gun does, and every hunting party kills the same T-Rex. So as not to change the past and thereby endanger the present, the often-slain dinosaur is killed just as it steps into a tar pit, and moments before a volcanic eruption lays waste to the entire area. Oh, and they use (futuristic) ice bullets (fired from futuristic guns) so they don’t leave any (futuristic) technology behind.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #1: How can they kill the same dinosaur over and over again, at the exact same moment in time, without bumping into themselves? Considering how well Time Safari is doing, there should be close to a hundred copies of Ed Burns and his crew taking pot shots at the same dinosaur. Theoretically, they can’t. When writing a film about time travel, it is always a good idea to have a basic grasp of the concepts and philosophies behind that particular branch of theoretical science. Timecop made more sense than this.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #2:
The mechanism that takes the hunting parties into the past is nothing more than a jury-rigged roller coaster harness, with the hooked restraining bar the comes down over your head. Once the bar is in place, passengers are warned not to move, or else nasty things will happen. When building a time machine, is it really a good idea to design it so that potentially catastrophic head mobility is not restricted? Or to make it look like a Six Flags ride?

It is during the after-hunt party that the romantic interest is introduced, scientist-turned-activist Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack). She crashes the party and sprays the fearless dinosaur killers with red paint sprayed from a (futuristic) champagne bottle. She is quickly escorted out as she rants about killing innocent prehistoric creatures and endangering humanity by tampering in the past.

Catherine McCormack comes across as completely and utterly unlikeable in her role, and sadly enough, it is not her fault. The blame for her grating performance rests fully on the shoulders of the directors and screenwriters, who seem to labor under the misguided assumption that strong female characters have to be bossy and abrasive, and that intelligent characters have to be rude and arrogant. The end result is that McCormack comes off as a real bitch, and not in an endearing or entertaining way.

Sonia’s pointless protest hurts Ryer’s feelings, and he rushes out to ask her who she thinks she is to judge him. It turns out that she thinks she is the inventor of the (futuristic) computer that makes time travel possible (TAMI, or the Time Alteration Mainframe Interface), who was forced out by the corporation when she rebelled against their evil capitalist plans for her invention. So why hasn’t Ryer, one of the top employees in the company, and someone who interfaces with TAMI on a regular basis, ever heard of her? Her answer: “I’m a nerd, not a lawyer.” Right, because being one of the creators of the greatest technological advancement since atomic energy wouldn’t have rated a mention in a magazine article or two before the whole thing went commercial.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #3:
Sonia Rand is enough of an egg-head genius that she invents the technology behind time travel, yet she is incapable of any advanced forms of electronic or industrial sabotage, like hacking into computer mainframes and erasing sensitive data? No, apparently she is forced to resort to symbolic scare tactics that even PETA protesters tend to shun nowadays.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #4:
Clever acronym names for intelligent computers were cute and trendy back when 2001 and War Games were big. That was over twenty years ago. Stop.

Upset at being lumped in with the other evil money-grubbing entrepreneurs, Ryer drags Sonia back to his place to expose his agenda. Unfortunately, exposing his agenda isn’t a metaphor for sex, but the guise under which the film is brought to a screeching halt before it even has a chance to start up. It seems that in the future all animals are extinct due to some mysterious virus (He live in the now-defunct Chicago Zoo. Get it?). The only reason Ryer works at Time Safari is so he can collect data that will aid his research into restoring the animal population once again. This scene is exposition-heavy, with Burns and McCormack vomiting mouthfuls of back story and pseudo-scientific theories while standing around a (futuristic) hologram of a now-extinct lion. It is also a complete waste of time, as this sub-plot has no bearing on the rest of the story, and is in fact never heard about again. Apart from absolving Ryer for the sin of profiting from his involvement with Time Safari, this scene serves no purpose.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #5: How does the human race survive with the rest of the food chain taken out of the equation? Wouldn’t the mass extinction of most of the world’s wildlife pose at least a minor strain on the planet’s delicate ecosystem? Again, having at least a passing knowledge of middle-school science lessons might be helpful when writing a science fiction film.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #6: If all animals are extinct, why are they schlepping rich thrill-seekers back to kill dinosaurs? Killing any currently extinct dangerous animals would earn a wannabe big game hunter bragging rights, and killing a Lion in the Serengeti a couple of hundred years ago would leave less room for a catastrophic time paradox then millions of years of evolution.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #7:
Exactly what good is studying one extinct prehistoric animal, when the other animals that went extinct did so millennia later, under completely different circumstances, and in a completely different environment?

Needless to say, the next trip doesn’t go well, as the Time Safari crew takes two new stuffed shirts (Corey Johnson as cliché boisterous jerk who is secretly a coward Christian Middleton, and William Armstrong as cliché nervous and scared but secretly courageous and strong Ted Eckles) back in time to kill a dinosaur. Time Safari employees apparently don’t routinely inspect their weapons before going on a mission. If they did, Ryer might have noticed that his gun had been damaged when a tripped while checking out the ass of one of his teammates. His gun locks up at the crucial moment, freezing all of the other guns, and chaos ensues. It is during the mad scramble to avoid the dinosaur and escape before the volcano explodes that someone does the unthinkable and steps off the path. The audience is not shown this, nor is the person responsible shown, but you would have to be a Time Safari employee to be dense enough to miss it.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #8: Customers of Time Safari are apparently rushed through a brief refresher course on time travel safety and etiquette minutes before the actual hunt. There is more training and preparation involved in learning how to operate the key grinder at Home Depot.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #9: If it so important that no steps off of the (futuristic) walkway that the time machine materializes for the game hunters, maybe they could program the computer to make one wider than four feet? Maybe some kind of guard rail would be in order. Where the hell is OSHA when you need them?

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #10:
All other guns in the hunting party are locked until Ryer’s gun is fired. First, why would his co-workers not be trusted, and second, how does controlling when a customer shoots prevent them from shooting the wrong thing?

Time Safari employees and customers call it a day after their near death experience, but it isn’t too long before the ever observant Ryer begins to notice that things are amiss. Temperatures start to rise. Plants and vines begin sprouting up all over the place. Giant holes open up in the (futuristic) street right in front of his (futuristic) taxi. All of these bizarre events occur after the first passing of what will soon be identified as a Time Wave.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #11:
That’s right. A Time Wave.

Ryer wisely suspecting that rapid vegetative growth and giant potholes equal time paradox. Desperate for answers, he races over to Sonia’s place. Sonia’s neighbors are blaming her for the sudden rain forest infestation because she has a greenhouse (makes sense to me), so she answers the door with a shotgun and tells him to take a hike. Ever the wily hunter, Ryer sneaks into her place by disguising himself as fertilizer delivery man. Once again, the filmmakers strive to endear McCormack’s character to the audience by having her treat the supposed delivery man like a mentally handicapped golf caddy.

Ryer unmasks and immediately wins Sonia over by informing her that she was right about everything. Her ego satiated, she summons Ryer to the window just in the nick of time for him to witness a Time Wave. The Time Wave brings with it a swarm of flesh eating insects that swarm devours anyone in its path, in CGI work reminiscent enough of The Mummy to be legally questionable. Ryer and Sonia beat a hasty retreat by leaping out of the sixteenth-story window, undoubtedly with the intention of figuring out the rest of their escape plan on the way down. Dumb luck saves the day again, however, and they just happen to be saved by the sudden appearance of vines and trees that have sprouted up because of the Time Wave.

The scientist daredevils race back to the lab, where they meet up with the other Time Safari employees to try and figure out what is happening. With the aid of a (futuristic) laser pointer, Sonia explains to the group that something was obviously altered during the safari mishap, causing Time Waves as the ripple effect of something being changed in the past effects the course of history in incremental steps.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #12:
Sweet Jesus on a Vespa. Where do you even begin with the Time Wave? This theory assumes that time not only travels in waves like water, but does so at a much slower rate than the time travelers themselves, who manage to jump back and forth instantaneously. These changes also happen gradually, as each ripple hits, for no really good reason. Also, if the ripple effect is akin to dropping a pebble in a lake, wouldn’t the lab be the epicenter of the ripples? If so, why is the Time Wave seen traveling over the ocean? Does the Time Wave need to allow for daylight saving time? Can you surf a Time Wave?

A review of the (futuristic) mission tapes reveal that one of the clients from the last trip might have wandered off the path and inadvertently brought something back with them. This would normally be impossible, but it turns out that the Kingsley’s character had, in true cliché greedy corporate mode, turned the bio-filters off in order to save on the electric bill. The government regulations stooge is in on it, of course, because there’s nothing more original in a sci-fi film than making the rich and powerful characters easily corruptible, uncontrollably greedy, and inherently evil. It might be realistic, but it has still been done to death.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #13:
Why bringing something back something as small as 1.3 grams would matter, especially after the damage has been done by straying off the path and altering something in the past, is never fully explained. Most likely, this is because it doesn’t make any sense.

Sonia musters all of her unappealing character traits for this scene, as she lectures the other professional time travelers around the table about the intricacies of time travel. If only the screenwriters had attended such a seminar. With the help of a (futuristic) laser pointer, she explains what is happening, and insists that the only way to save the world is to go back in time and stop whichever Time Safari customer botched the last trip.

Inexplicably, the group decides not to rush into action and jump back in time right now. Instead, a plan is devised that involves traveling on foot across a rapidly changing jungle/city landscape, tracking down Middleton and Eckles, and deducing which of them altered the past by examining their souvenir time travel suits. This pointless trek must be done quickly, however, before the final time wave permanently changes the course of history.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #14: According to the film’s Time Wave theory, you can’t travel back to the moment the time waves began, because you can’t travel through the time waves. However, traveling back one year before and then doubling back bypass all of the waves should work like a charm. Back to the Future II was more logical than this film.

What follows is nearly indescribable. Our intrepid team of weapons-trained time travel safari hunters makes its way through a (futuristic) city now overrun by dense rain forest foliage and bizarre evolutionary advancements in deadly animals. Along the way they encounter groups of citizens who have managed to survive these events. Curiously enough, it only takes a single day for society as a whole to collapse into a state of pure Anarchy. In the course of a single day makeshift blockades have been erected, grocery stories have been looted clean, and society as a whole as collapsed into a sparse collection of survival outposts and desperate scavengers.

The laws of nature, physics, and supply and demand might have collapsed under the strain of ill-conceived logic, but the rules of by-the-books story structure still hold fast and strong. This is clearly demonstrated when, as should be expected, the black team member dies first. He is paralyzed by poisonous animated plants and torn apart by what can only be described as a pack of Monkeysauruses.

The survivors track down Eckles at his apartment complex, now surrounded by makeshift fencing and armed guards. They find him inside keeping a huge bonfire going, no doubt so the survivors can huddle around and stay warm in the tropic heat of the sweltering jungle night. The sweaty and nervous Eckles proves to be a (futuristic) red herring, and rats out Middleton as the guilty party.

With time running out, they steal a car (unfortunately overlooked during the planning phase of the journey) and race to Middleton’s penthouse. Middleton waves a gun around menacingly before turning it on himself. This is a rather insensitive time to introduce the aspect of suicide to an audience no doubt eager for a way out of the film themselves. Middleton’s apartment is ransacked for clues. The clue turns out to be a gigantic butterfly pasted to the sole of his time travel suit’s boot.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #15: According to this film’s theories on evolution, removing a single butterfly from a prehistoric ecosystem will change future climate patterns enough for rainforests to thrive where they would have previously been unsustainable. It will also somehow allow primates to cross breed with reptiles, creating deadly Dinoragutangs with Kevlar-lined skulls.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #16:
It is worth pointing out at this point that the hunting location visited by the Time Safari crew and clients was arrived at moments before a volcanic eruption laid waste to the entire area. One would think that such a cataclysmic blast that could destroy a dense jungle would have incinerated the butterfly. If the butterfly was actually capable of surviving such an event, then a size eleven work boot shouldn’t be able to finish it off.

Now armed with the pertinent (yet essentially irrelevant) information, the dwindling team of hopeful saviors rushes back to Time Safari. Another Time Wave beats them there, however, and they arrive to find the portal out of commission and the building now home to a swarm of the bulletproof chimp raptors. They beat a hasty retreat, leaving the evil capitalist bastards to their fate in true heroic form. The new plan is to plug the time travel software into the nearby university’s (futuristic) portal, and use that to un-alter the past.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #17: When simians and reptiles manage to crossbreed, their freakish offspring will hang from ceilings like bats when they sleep. Because, you know, that makes sense.

With time running out (sigh), Ryer and crew decide to reduce the risk factors involved with crossing dangerous jungle terrain. The obvious choice is to travel on foot through the murky swamp that now resides within the subway system. With the university right over their noses, they are forced to travel through a submerged subway train that has somehow managed to remain air-tight beneath the swamp. Believe it or not, this proves to be a bad idea. A giant sea snake breaks through the carriage window and takes out one of the few remaining non-essential team members. The train then fills with water almost immediately, proving that the filmmakers know as much about basic physics as they do time travel theory.

Travis and the phallic anaconda-shaped creature are quickly locked in an underwater struggle that would make Freud blush. Our brave hero loses this wrestling match with his Id, and Sonia pulls his limp and spent (my apologies to Freud) body out in time to perform one of the worst depictions of CPR ever seen on film. Seventies exploitation film action stars pulled their punches more realistically than her heart massage, and she is barely blowing air in his general direction when she manages to revive him. Ed Harris’ patented Screaming and Slapping Resuscitation Technique from The Abyss was more believable.

They finally get to the University, only to have the Chimpanzillas hot on their trail. Sonia sets up the time machine and launches Ryer into the past just before the final Time Wave hits and turns her into a giant humanoid catfish.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #18: That’s right. Remove a butterfly from prehistoric Earth, and mankind will evolve from fish. Anyone suffering from severe migraines at this point may be excused for the rest of the review.

Travis successfully slingshots back to the ill-fated Time Safari expedition. He manages to keep Middleton on the path during the confusion, and then exposes himself to the team member in charge of recording the hunt. He tips her off to the bio-filters being off, tells her to give the trip recording directly to him (not him, of course, but his other him), then prevents Middleton from stepping off the path before vanishing in a puff of logic.

SCI-FI GEEK CONNIPTION #19: It is at this point that most Sci-Fi Geeks will simply collapse from sheer exhaustion. How come the hunters never bump into themselves when shooting the same dinosaur over and over, yet Ryer is able to meet up with them and warn them of the danger to come? Since they’ve altered the past once again, why does it change instantaneously this time? Do Time Waves occur only during every other paradox, or is this the cosmic equivalent of a Mulligan?

Ryer receives the recording and immediately notices that there are two of him in it. Recognizing this as possibly time paradox related, he rushes it to Sonia’s greenhouse penthouse and presents it as the proof she needs to have Time Safari shut down. The relationship they forged in the previous time line now starts anew; but will these two be able to bond emotionally without the assistance of a tragic time travel disaster of epic proportions to bring them together? It’s as about as likely as monkeys cross breeding with lizards, and almost as unappealing to contemplate.

The Editing Room: What we would do differently

At the end, Ryer knocks on Sonia’s door. The door opens to reveal Claude Van Damme’s character from Timecop. Claude kicks the snot out of him and tells him that the next time he pulls a stunt like this, he and Guy Pearce from the Time Machine remake will drop his sorry ass in fifteenth century France.

At the end, Ryer knocks on Sonia’s door. The door opens to reveal that she has inexplicably remained a humanoid catfish. Ryer looks at the camera, shrugs, and gives her a wet sloppy kiss as ‘Hooray for Hollywood’ plays in the background.

Final Note

No comparison was made between this film and the Ray Bradbury's original story by the same name out of respect for the author. There's no reason to drag the man's good name into this.
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