Time Travel Movie Fest: Timescape

1992 science fiction movie

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A widower and his daughter renovating a hotel have strange visitors from another time.

Check out that poster! Without reading a plot synopsis for this movie, which is also called Grand Tour: Disaster in Time, you wouldn't have any idea what this is about. It looks like it could be about a guy who is struck by lightning while lighting his farts, but that would seem to be a huge spoiler alert.

If you're keeping score, this makes three time travel movies for Jeff Daniels, at least if you count Pleasantville as a time travel movie. The guy certainly picks some interesting roles for himself in between some junk roles. I like Jeff Daniels much more as a 41 year old than I did as a 20-something-year-old, so apparently, he's the type of actor who grows on you.

I do want to warn you about something though. And yes, I realize this is a spoiler, but I think going into this movie with this little bit of knowledge could save somebody from a shock that might give them a heart attack. This movie, although it starts slowly and mysteriously, gets wackier and wackier as it goes, eventually just tossing out all rules we've learned about in all these other time-travel stories and acting like it's never even seen Back to the Future or heard of paradoxes. Our character even screams, "Fuck the physics!" at one point in this movie. And eventually, you've got two Jeff Daniels on screen at the same time. As far as I know, that's the record for most Jeff Daniels on the screen at the same time, but I'm far from a Jeff Daniels expert.

I liked this movie, and I liked the premise, a concept that's apparently borrowed for a 1999 television movie called Thrill Seekers that I'll probably get around to watching later. In this, the time travelers are tourists who are visiting the past in order to witness disasters--the Chicago fire, the San Francisco earthquake, the Hindenburg explosion, etc. And with that, you've got the old question about whether or not a time traveler should attempt to change things in the past to save lives or avoid these disasters. The "time machine" itself is a little bogus, but the creepy voyeuristic aspect is cool, and it does bring up that interesting philosophical and moral dilemma, one that is looked at both globally and personally here.

There's an actor named Time Winters in this movie. He's only in one other time travel movie.

Favorite scenes: One cool shot with a drugged Daniels in a spinning room and another where he punches a woman like he thinks he's Nicolas Cage or something.

Question of the Day: If you could travel back in time and observe (just observe--not change at all) any one disaster, which would you pick? I know what I'd pick, but I'll save it for the comments.