Time Travel Movie Fest: Frequency

2000 father/son movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A man who lost his firefighting father at a young age begins communicating with him on a ham radio and, thanks to his big mouth, manages to screw up a whole bunch of stuff.

This one strives for tears, laying it on really thick with the father/son relationship stuff and a soundtrack like syrup. I really think I would have liked both the movie and its characters a little more if Dennis Quaid's character would have said "Little Chief" or just "Chief" about a hundred times less.

Actually, I did think the characters were likable despite their accents. This is the second time travel movie I've seen recently with Jim Caviezel as he was also in Deja Vu. He's so boyish here, almost like he's modeling his performance off the performance of the little kid who's playing the younger version of his character. Dennis Quaid's accent is thick, almost like a parody, and the character's just too damn heroic. He nearly winds up as an action hero by the end of this thing.

The "time travel" stuff is as implausible as any of these other movies--a magic ham radio and Aurora Borealis?--but it's a cool idea. I like how the story's handled with all these changes in the past having these immediate impacts on John Sullivan's present, but it's a little odd that he retains memories from all versions of his past. Also, some of the touches, including one that involves an arm, don't make a lot of sense. But it all still helps develop its themes although I think those themes would have been stronger if this didn't have such a happy ending. The movie was just a lot more believable when it was dark. By the end, things get wacky, and the climactic moment, although a little predictable since there's something foreshadowed throughout the movie, is still capable of making you slap your forehead. A concluding montage also made me nearly gag. I did like how much of a factor the 1969 World Series was in this.

This movie, by the way, has to break some kind of cinema record for having the most shots of something falling in slow motion. I kept track, and there are 97 different things that fall in slow motion in this movie. Here's a list:

a baseball
a picture
a glass
a can of sardines
car keys
a piece of candy
a bicycle
a Herb Albert record
a knife
a pack of cigarettes
a shoe
an ink pen
a pair of sunglasses
a vibrator
an autograph book
a fireman helmet
rain
two people (from a window)
a slinky
a puppet
a catcher's glove
a baseball bat
papers
toenails (clipped)
a bowl
an iron
leaves
a baseball cap
a ham radio
long underwear
a puppet
a bicycle pump
a saltine
an empty manila folder
an hourglass
a fireman's hose
a snow globe
tweezers
a gun
a fishing pole

Ok, I'm bored with that. Email me if you'd like to see the complete list.