Time Travel Movies, of course (#SFWApro)

We start with two mythos I’ve known only by repute until now—

As I knew Veggie Tales was an evangelical Christian series, I was surprised THE PIRATES WHO DON’T DO ANYTHING: A Veggie Tales Movie (2008) doesn’t come off terribly religious, except for the ending message (that you always get help when you need it and your quest is never greater than you can handle). That aside, it’s a familiar zero-to-hero story as a princess’ magic wish for heroes to help her brings three busboys from a pirate-themed restaurant to the 1700s to battle the cyborg pirate (wooden limbs rather than steel) plotting to overthrow the kingdom. Storywise this is okay, but I don’t think the voice actors had enough oomph. “If you give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day. If you give a man a rowboat …. um ….”

IT’S A MEANINGFUL LIFE (2010) is actually an episode of the Veggie Tales TV series on DVD (so it won’t go in the book, as I don’t do individual episodes): a high-school jock reflects on his life since losing the Big Game and then gets a chance to see how things would be different if he’d won. Again, other than the ending message (God planned your life so it must be good) this is interchangeable with countless It’s a Wonderful Life sitcom episodes. I did dislike the protagonist turned out exactly like the real-world friend who did win the game, as I’d have preferred him becoming a different kind of jerk.

Mythos Number two—POKEMON: Arceus and the Jewel of Life (2009) has Ash and Co. conveniently show up at a small town just as the super-powerful Pokemon Arceus returns for revenge on the residents for betraying him centuries ago. This leads to a time trap back to the era of the betrayal in hopes of averting the backstab (which succeeds but rather illogically). The story was surprisingly good, but not being a fan, I glazed over during the frequent Pokemon battles (this must be how TYG feels when I’m watching something with super-hero fights). “We shall change history today.”

The time-travel element in AUSTIN POWERS IN GOLDMEMBER (2002) is inconsequential (Austin goes back to 1975, picks up Foxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles and returns) and illogical (they forgot original Austin was in cryo in the seventies) but definitely enough for my book. Time-travel aside, this feels like Mike Myers ran out of plot (which concerns the kidnapping of father Michael Caine and Dr. Evil’s scheme to smash a meteor into the North Pole) and so filled out space with SNL sketch comedy (drawn out gag sequences and the opening self-parody)—though I am amazed they didn’t work in an Empire Strikes Back joke on Evil’s parentage. If this really is the swan song for the International Man of Mystery, I’m fine with that. “This looks like Godzilla, but due to international copyright laws, it is not!”

THE DAY TIME ENDED (1980) feels almost as incomprehensible as El Topo, though it doesn’t have the same surrealist pretensions. A family in the Southwest finds their house besieged by UFOs and stop-motion monsters (showing it’s harder to animate those than O’Brien and Harryhausen made it look) before being transplanted to another world through a time space warp. The evidence of any time travel is so slight, I think this is another for the appendix. “Maybe this was all meant to be.”

BEYOND THE TIME BARRIER (1960) has Robert Clarke’s super-fast plane hurling him into Earth’s future (for the implausible reason that his speed combined with Earth’s own movement through space actually exceeded the speed of light!!!) where the last generation of irradiated humanity is facing obsolescence if the bald mutants don’t kill them first. Can Clarke get back to the present to change things? As the 1950s film book Keep Watching the Skies notes, this is full of dumb ideas (why exactly does returning home age Clarke 40 years?) but I did like one self-serving scientist’s defense of blowing off the future (“I won’t be here, so I’ll never know how they die, will I?”). Not recommended. “In that moment you were unattached from the time-spheres of Earth and the solar system.”
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