Review of Time Chasers (1994) by Stephen A — 11 Aug 2007

I feel badly for the actors and directors of this film who may come across the other reviews here about it. The film was fairly well done - for a low-budget film. The criticisms are many: The evil CEO's office in an apparent library, the antique computer with outdated floppys (even for 1994) and the fairly wooden acting. But what do we expect, Spielberg? Lucas? I'm sure they could have taken this film to greater heights, but I give it its due. Think about it. The plotline was clever. How many ways can you go into the past? Car, stationary machine, plane? But the "future" portrayed here was embarrassing. Frankly, I thought they had gone BACK in time to 1984! Surely, they could have done better than this. Even in 1994, people knew what types of technologies to expect in the near future. Why not portray even one laptop?

I enjoyed the revolutionary war re-enactors, but I think a "twist" of an ending would have been cute, and could have salvaged some of the film. What if, when they returned, everyone had BRITISH accents, including the evil CEO of a now-British conglomerate. Think about it.

So, here's my "director's cut" of this film: 1. Allow the lead actor to drive a car (better chase scenes) 2. Use a real computer - at least use the right sized disks - today, he'd use a flash drive 3. Cut the "ditching bicycles" scene (it's only 3 seconds long) 4. Show a better, more plausible future 5. Shorten the "bad future" scene, and shoot it at night, or in the fog, to make it look REALLY ominous, and 6. Make the final scene important (as I said above). Until then, my rating is 2/5. See it if you must.