Product: Frequency (2000)
Rating: 5.0
Suspend your disbelief and enjoy a great time travel tale
The paradoxes of time travel are enough to convince most people that it is impossible, along with warp drive, transporter beams, and lots of other staples of science fiction. Still, writers persist in telling time travel stories and we continue to enjoy them, usually because they are about something else besides time travel. The deciding factor is not the scientific logic of the method of time travel, because ultimately the rationale simply has to be plausible enough to engage our willing suspension of disbelief. There are many people who enjoyed "Somewhere in Time" and that involved Christopher Reeves' character THINKING himself back to the past. In the end all that matters are two things. First, that there is a logical consistency to the rules of the game, whatever they might be. Second, that there is an emotional payoff to the story that is told under these circumstances. This is why the "Star Trek" episode "The City on the Edge of Forever" and the very best episodes of "Quantum Leap" were so fantastic.The script for "Frequency" written by Toby Emmerich meets both of those criteria. On the logical consistency axis the twist is to have a time travel story where nobody actually travels through time. Instead the aurora borealis allows a father, Frank Sullivan (Dennis Quaid) and son, John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) living in the same house in Queens to talk over the same ham radio set despite the difference of thirty years. On the emotional payoff scale there is the fact that the father died thirty years ago fighting a fire and the son, who was only 6 at the time, is desperate to reach back into the past, not only to save his father's life but to stop his own life from going into the gutter. Now, that could be an entire movie right there. But for Emmerich and director Gregory Hoblit that is just the opening act of the story, because no good deed goes unpunished and if the old chestnut about stepping on a butterfly in the age of dinosaurs could chain out and change the fate of humanity you can imagine what the saving of a life accomplishes. What starts off as a science fiction/fantasy story suddenly becomes a thriller.I thought the ways the rules of the game were exploited in "Frequency" was brilliant from a narrative standpoint. Of course if you change the past you change the future, but in "Frequency" this does not happen instantly from John's perspective. He can tell the new "memories" from the old as things change. Granted, this is a dramatic device that comes into play big time in the film's climax, but that is why the logical consistency matters more than the scientific and the ending is set up by more subtle examples of the principle at work earlier in the film. I also like the way that the 1969 World Series was used in this film (I got up in the middle of the night to listen to the games on Armed Forces Radio in Japan that year, so I have strong memories of it as well) and the way that John and his father try to figure out ways of working together to change the past so they have a future.I never took physics, so I did not having any annoying scientific facts gnawing at my brain while enjoying this film, which may be why I had no problem seeing what happened in this movie as being logically consistent. I just understood the rules and thoroughly enjoyed the film. I thought I had the ending pegged, but was pleasantly surprised with what happened instead (however, on the audio commentary by the director Hoblit reveals that the ending he wanted to shoot was the one I envisioned). For those of little scientific faith there are a series of explanations offered on the added attractions on the disc, which includes the usually deleted and extended scenes, and three audio commentary tracks by (1) the director Hoblit, (2) the writer Toby Emmerich and his brother Noah, who plays Gordo Hersch, John's next door neighbor and best friend; and (3) composer Michael Kamen. When you do any of those be sure to turn on the trivia captions as well. This is one of those DVDs where any doubts about rating are erased by the bonus features.Ultimately, I found "Frequency" to be almost as good as the "Leap Home" two-part episode of "Quantum Leap," the best time travel story I have ever seen. That is high praise indeed. Final Note: That was not just any episode of "Hill Street Blues" on the television that John is watching in his home early in the film but "Trial by Fury," the season premier for the show's third season. It was not only directed by Hoblit, but was the show that earned the series another Best Drama Emmy and remains one of the Top 10 television episodes I have ever seen in my life.