Timescape (1992)

Brilliant and touching

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

Wasted about an hour of my life on this film, thinking it was going to be a decent time travel film and maybe even a hidden gem.However, it was so bad I couldn't even finish the thing.The acting (bar Jeff Daniels and the guy playing the bus driver) was uniformly terrible. It felt like watching one of those really cheap daytime TV shows full of people who can't act.The storyline was an unsophisticated and childish idea about sight-seeing time travellers who visit places where disastrous events are about to take place so they can observe for their own pleasure.The daftest thing though, was how Jeff Daniels finds out about the time travellers, which is via finding a passport belonging to one of them with lots of different dates on it. Forgetting the possible issues around a time traveller using the same passport for tens or even hundreds of years without it being an issue (I'm thinking here about how passports have changed over the years and they would need different ones for different time periods), the most stupid thing about it is how he suddenly jumps to the conclusion of them being time travellers without even a hint of scepticism or even considering any other possible scenarios (such as a fake passport or even just putting it down to some weird unexplainable anomaly). Of all they ways he could have discovered their secret, this was about the daftest and his sudden conviction that were time travellers based on this passport with mismatching dates on it was not at all believable and rather ludicrous.Terrible film.

I saw this film on TV and it reminded me of a Sci-Fi story I had read many years ago in a Sci-Fi magazine called, at that time, "Astounding Science Fiction". The title of the story was "Vintage Season" and I believe the author was Lawrence O'Donnell. Incidentally, I still have the magazine. This information may be of use to followers of this genre and if anyone knows how I may be able to obtain a copy of a later published book by this author containing this story I would appreciate it.As far as the film is concerned I must add that, in my opinion, it was cleverly directed and the acting by Jeff Daniels was up to his usual good standard. There is no need for me to outline the plot as this has already been done except to say that, although I personally have always been interested in time travel stories and/or films, there is no need to be acquainted with this genre to follow the plot and enjoy the film. I saw the film under the title "Timescape" which is elusive enough to attract attention. In my opinion the film has a softer and more acceptable ending than the story but otherwise adheres to the original quite well. I would give it full marks as a film which does not contain any far-fetched sequences so often included in other films of this genre.

Now let me justify that bold summary. Sure, PITCH BLACK and CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK have a zillion bucks of special effects up there on the screen. And I did actually enjoy PITCH BLACK for what it was. But it was pretty hard for me to get involved with the characters and care much about what happened to them between all the explosions and monsters and whatever. Let's face it, balancing truck loads of creatures, spaceships and other eye candy with a script (yes, these things do have a script) - and I mean the story in that script - is a tough job. Even Spielberg lost control of his story in a couple of films.I'm really not putting down what director David Twohy has done since. I just think, in many cases, that a film can benefit from having technical limitations. It forces the director - and everyone else in the cast and crew - to focus on what really makes a great film: the story. THE GRAND TOUR has that big time. It has characters that you can care about, because they're written well in the story. Ariana Richards is just right in this pre-JURASSIC PARK role, for example. Plus we get nice performances from character actors like George Murdock. There are some fairly decent twists to the story, because, well, there is a story. Which means the actors get some decent lines and don't spend the time screaming or saying things like "gotta kill a few people", or something just as insightful. The effects shots are kept to a minimum, most likely due to budget. So they matter less here, and we get nearly all of the camera time on the characters. And that makes the film work.So what's my point? First, if you like sci-fi, especially low-key character driven sci-fi drama, then GRAND TOUR is a film worth seeing. Second, I think David Twohy the director is better when he lets David Twohy the writer really go to town. The only thing I like better of his, would be THE FUGITIVE (he wrote it but did not direct). Now GRAND TOUR is not perfect, and it's no FUGITIVE, but it's pretty entertaining and for Twohy in the director's chair, it's my favorite. I do understand the need to "give 'em what they want" with the CGI and all, but one can balance story and visuals. I hope to see a Twohy film written this well get a real budget. Who knows, maybe folks would even go see it.

Jeff Daniels does a good job considering the script and the storyline moves along nicely. It's fairly predictable at times, but I still enjoyed it. The special effects are not overly cheesy, which puts it on par with the rest of the movie. The scenes with the time tourists were pretty tiresome.********SPOILERS********The end of the movie was contrived. He naturally goes back and saves his wife also, after saving his daughter and half of the town. What the hell? This guy now has a free pass to change anything he wants for the rest of his life? Why didn't that guy from the future confiscate his passport?Rating: 6.0