#663 – Timemaster (1995)

Timemaster (1995)

Film review #663

Director: James Glickenhaus

SYNOPSIS: In a post-apocalyptic 2007 United States, young Jesse’s parents are kidnapped by a race of time-travelling aliens. He is helped by one of the aliens to rescue them from a game of virtual reality played by the aliens that is fought to the death, and takes the chance to stop the nuclear war that destroyed civilisation in the process…

THOUGHTS/ANALYSIS: Timemaster is a 1995 sci-fi film. This is where I’d usually recap the plot of the film but…the big problem with this film is that is simply incomprehensible. The beginning of the film is set in a post-apocalyptic U.S. in 2007 after a soldier went mad in the White House kitchen and launched nuclear weapons. Jesse is living in a desert outpost with his younger sister and their parents. One day some people show up in a spaceship that might be aliens and kidnap Jesse’s parents to take part in a virtual reality game in the future. One of the maybe aliens from the future helps Jesse travel through time to rescue his parents and also prevent the nuclear apocalypse. Incorporating time travel into a film’s story always runs the risk of complicating it and generating plotholes, and this film suffers from that immensely, even before it introduces the aliens and whatnot. Jesse travels through time to the Wild West, where he saves his Father; or is it actually virtual reality? When he time travels does he inhabit the body of his ancestor, since people seem to recognise him? I honestly can’t tell. There is no coherence between the different settings, too many characters, and too many things going on.

This film definitely wants to be the next Back to the Future. The young protagonist makes friends with a much older mentor who allows him to travel through time, including to the past, future and the wild west. That’s apparently not enough though, as they also add the whole virtual reality death-game thing as well. Jesse is clearly set up to be the next Marty McFly, but he seems a bit too young and he’s not that great of an actor. Although it’s clear that he got the role not based on his acting ability, but because he is the son of the director, and actually named Jesse, alongside his on-screen sister also being played by his sister. Isiah, the mentor and obvious Doc Brown equivalent is played by Pat Morita AKA Mr Miyagi from The Karate Kid. His character clearly leans on that mentor role he is most famous for, but his performance here in no way stands up to that, and feels very weak by comparison. Annie is Jesse’s romantic interest who he picks up in the Wild West, and who does absolutely nothing in the film beyond following Jesse around; they have no scenes alone, no character development, nothing. I don’t know what the point of her character is. Eventually we get into the future or alien world or whatever, where the virtual reality life-or-death game is played. the winners get a blue goo that extends there life, and the losers get turned into the blue goo, with people betting a certain amount of time (in the form of said blue goo) on the matches. You could probably base the whole film around this, but it’s just another plot element amongst the mess of others. The Chairman of this sport (if you can call it that) is played by Michael Dorn AKA Worf from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Maybe you won’t recognise him without the makeup, but you’ll definitely recognise that iconic voice. Unfortunately, his character isn’t really fleshed out enough to make a decent villain: we don’t really get to know anything about him.

This is, ultimately a kids film, packed with lots of action and adventure, and while it does have a lot of flashy effects and contraptions that would appeal to this audience, it’s all too overwhelming to piece together. There is at least one swear word too, so I’m not sure it is meant to be a kids film. Maybe it, again, is trying to emulate Back to the Future by having a bit of an edge, but there’s not enough here to do that, especially, as mentioned, that the lead character is too young to really balance being a kid and young adult, like Marty McFly was. Overall, Timemaster is a confusing and haphazard mess, that, despite some recognisable actors, fails to make any of the mish-mash of its ideas stick, or its characters interesting. It comes across as a ploy to get the director’s children into an acting career by taking the lead roles; a move that seems to have spectacularly backfired insomuch as James Glickenhaus retired from filmmaking after this film. While seeing stars like Pat Morita and Michael Dorn in the film make it a novelty, that’s really the only thing you can get out of this incomprehensible, budget Back to the Future-derivative mess.