input: Mix exotic tropical locations, babes in skimpy attire, explosions, good-looking Dudley Do-Right clones, a movie star with his best years behind him (Martin Sheen), a little martial arts and a sexy villainess (Tracy Lor.....er, sorry...Tracy ELIZABETH Lords) and you'd think you'd be in for some escapist fun. Not so! This is a dreary TV movie and even though it likes to promote itself as a "Charlie's Angels" deal,it is nowhere near as good as the original series or even the gawdawful, irretrievably stupid, recent C.A. movies. This abomination is best described as a THIRD RATE Andy Sidaris film. Nowhere near as much fun as Andy's "Hard Ticket To Hawaii", although some of the fight scenes are decent enough. The girls spend too much time posing and trying too look prissy and it gets annoying after a while. There's better genre stuff that this out there. Oh yeah, and the "babes" aren't as hot as they like to think they are. Terrible soundtrack...when it's there.

Is the sentiment of this review positive or negative?

pos/neg ans: negative

input: I picked up Time Changer because it looked like a nice low-budget scifi time travel movie and I was in the mood for something like that. The description said it had something to do with some biblical stuff and time travel but I didn't expect a fundamentalist Christian film!

The movie had decent special effects and an interesting premise that could have gone places and been far more interesting than it ended up being. Our hero, who is a bible professor from the 1890s, eventually travels forward to the 2000s and finds that modern life is filled with the influences of evil - Jesus is nowhere to be found. This wonderful technological feat is accomplished with the assistance of a fellow bible teacher who somehow managed to invent a functional HG-Wells-style time machine. The movie starts to lose some credibility at this point, which is unfortunate because this happens very early in the film. Earlier (or perhaps immediately later, can't remember for certain), our hero professor was seen teaching what appeared to be a science class where he claimed that scientific findings could only be considered validated if it could be matched with what the bible says. What should be obvious to anyone is that this is clearly not what the scientific method is about, however it is presented such that the filmmakers appear to prefer the point of view that science is useful only if it supports their claims and otherwise is not useful.

In any case, that belief is perfectly valid and sensible in the context of the character at the time. So, if we accept that as the fact of life for these bible professors, then obviously the professor who went and invented the time machine isn't a very strong believer as I don't think there's any evidence (and none was offered) for the physics of time travel in the bible. So immediately there's a problem with mixed messages and credibility there, but never mind...

After the professor is convinced to take the leap into the future, the shock of modern technology was handled quite well in most cases. It was also fun to not have it pinned down to an exact year (as the character is reading the date off a newspaper to himself, a car honks a horn and it scares him into not finishing the date: it's just two thousand and... *honk*). Some of the shock went on a little too long, though. For instance, the car was one of the first things he encountered when he arrived and around two days later he's invited to a church movie night and takes a ride in a van. He sticks his head out the window like a dog might, is scared by the headlights and the starting engine, etc. That seemed a bit off since he'd been there a few days by this point and the city appeared to be quite busy with traffic. In any case, that's easy to ignore. The rest of the tech shock was well done - especially his first encounter with the TV which was delayed because he didn't even realize what it was until he saw a kid watching one and using a remote.

Unfortunately, our hero predictably starts to preach to virtually everyone he meets as if he's an authority on all life and religion just because he's from the past and is an elder. Eventually he gets himself a brief moment in the spotlight at the church he had been visiting where he proceeds to explain his concept of Christianity to them in a long monologue that was supposed to be moving and insightful, but mostly was just more of the same. A couple of husbands in the church begin to get a funny feeling about this guy (go figure) and investigate his name. They eventually conclude that he either is a time traveler or is impersonating this long dead bible professor and decide to find out which it is. The movie frames these guys as non-believer bad guys for being skeptical.

Just before the professor is to head back to his own time, he is confronted by those two men. In an effort to avoid being arrested or hauled away, he eventually breaks into an almost insane-like rant about how Jesus is coming soon and that he's a prophet so they should listen to him. Just in time, he's whisked away and one of the husbands wonders if perhaps this is the rapture he'd heard so much about.

The irony is that this essentially means the professor became a self-proclaimed (and most likely false) prophet claiming to know that the rapture was near and he was sent by God when truthfully he was sent by his fellow bible professor and did not have any God-given knowledge (that was stated or even hinted at).

As I understand it, Revelation claims that the time of the end is only for God to know and at the end of the film we see the inventor professor trying (and failing) to send a bible into the future. First 2080, then 2070, etc. as the scene fades out. Clearly he's trying to determine the exact date of the end times - which he shouldn't be able to know! Essentially, the entire premise of the movie cancels itself out because by being so insistent on their religious beliefs and how certain things are for God to know only, it means there couldn't ever BE a time machine in the first place because then mankind could find out something that only God should know! The entire movie's premise collapses and makes the whole thing basically worthless as it undermines it's own credibility in the end.

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pos/neg ans: negative

input: This film has slipped through the cracks of film history. It is by far much better than some other New York films of the same era such as: "The French Connection" or "The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3". There is a gritty reality to this film which also manages to effectively use humor to further the plot line. It's engaging from start to finish and hasn't tarnished with age as is the case with the above two examples.

Ron Liebman turns in a bravura performance as "Batman" and it's a shame his career didn't take off as a result of this project.

Gordon Parks directs and, coming as it does after "Shaft", it at first appears to be a strange choice. Yet it is the flip side of that earlier effort and approached with just as much in your face machismo.

Unfortunately this film has not been made available on either DVD or VHS in the United States. United Artists really has a gem on their hands and it's a shame they're not doing anything with it.

Is the sentiment of this review positive or negative?

pos/neg ans:
positive