(Recycling an old post from my own blog again. This one’s from 2015, when I was working on Now and Then We Time Travel)
Over the past couple of days, I watched two time-travel movies that were completely unalike, except for being terrible. Because their worldviews are so alien to each other, I couldn’t resist blogging about them as a twisted sort of double feature.
Judging by its trailer, Premature (2014) wants to be a raunchy comedy with a heart, but it’s got no heart, little comedy and too much sexism. Rob (John Karna) is having a crappy day, brightened by the chance to lose his virginity with school hottie Angela (Carlson Young)/ He finds this bright enough he blows off his lifelong platonic BFF Gaby (Katie Findlay) to hook up. Angela tells Rob she’s doing this because he doesn’t treat her like a slut and he makes her feel safe.
Alas, as they start to make out he comes prematurely and time loops back to the morning, when his mother catches him jerking off. While the movie recycles fewer of the first day’s scenes than most time-loop films, it recycles that moment a lot. A whole lot.
Rob discovers he reboots time whenever he ejaculates. This leads to lots of attempted humor through him desperately trying to jerk off so he can escape the consequences of his actions. Said actions are pure dick moves: in one scene he grabs a teacher’s large breasts just to see if they’re real. The movie seems to share his view that this is unobjectionable — after all, the teacher won’t remember after the next time loop.
Time loop films are typically about getting second chances or learning some life lessons; Rob’s big lesson is that he should choose Gaby the Good Girl to take his virginity, not Angela the Slut. When he does, the time loop ends.
It’s unlikely I’d ever be pleased with a movie making such a madonna/whore distinction between two teenage girls, but it doesn’t make sense dramatically either. The movie presents Angela as someone who’s genuinely fond of Rob, then suddenly reveals she only wants to sleep with him so he’ll do her homework and her term papers. To drive the point home, several characters in the last 20 minutes or so remind Rob that Angela is The Big Slut and he shouldn’t be sleeping with her. Gaby, on the other hand, showed no romantic interest in Rob until the end. If they’d kept them as buddies and the message had been “Don’t be a jerk to you friend in order to get laid.” I’d have liked it a little better … but not much.
Carlisle (D. David Morin), the protagonist of Time Changer (2002), would be horrified by the raunchy humor of Premature. An 1890 seminary professor of science, the movie opens as he’s shown his colleagues a groundbreaking new book that claims ethics can be taught separately from Christianity. Most of his colleagues are blown away by his work but not Professor Anderson (Gavin MacLeod, looking smug as only Gavin MacLeod can). He tells Carlisle there’s no morality without Jesus: “Thou shalt not steal?” would be meaningless if it wasn’t endorsed by the Son of God (never mind that the Ten Commandments included that rule centuries before Jesus). Anderson thinks Carlisle’s secular approach would be worse than not teaching morality at all.
To prove his case, Anderson uses his “singularity chrono-displacer” to send Carlisle into the distant future of 1990. Once he arrives, Carlisle spends most of the movie staring around in shell-shocked horror—lacy underwear is openly for sale in stores, inflaming men’s lusts! Movies blaspheme the name of God! Churches are as much about social events as preaching God’s word! People think because they’re good, they don’t need Jesus! Schools teach secular science even when their conclusions disagree with Christian doctrine! A former Hollywood star turned born-again Christian (played by Jennifer O’Neill, a Hollywood star who became born again — is that meta or what? tells Carlisle that secular entertainment is Satan’s greatest tool. Even the Hays Code drawn up in the 1930s was Satanic because it gave movies the appearance of morality while they moved steadily away from Jesus!
Finally realizing Professor Anderson was right, Carlisle returns to the present and rewrites his book. After he tells Anderson that 1990 seems like the start of the end times, Anderson gets to wondering — can his machine tell him when the Last Days will come? When he sets the chrono-displacer to reach 2100, nothing happens — there’s no 2100 to visit!
2070? Same result.
Frowning, Anderson keeps turning the dial closer and closer to the beginning of the 21st century — mother of god, if it’s that close, we’d better get ready!
I watched several Christian time travel movies for my book; most of them, even if I didn’t share their theology, had a plot. The closest Time Changer gets is two cops trying to figure out who this weirdo Carlisle is. As they don’t arrest him or pose any real challenge to him returning to 1890, it’s more the illusion of a plot than the real deal.
Instead, Time Changer beats us over the head with its message about our fallen secular modern world. A world where American children can no longer pray in schools (that’s an outright lie), and all you have to do evangelize someone is tell them “Jesus died for your sins. Only by believing that can you get into heaven” (in real life it’s not that easy). Where being more secular, we’re less moral — never mind the vast moral improvements since 1890, such as equal rights for people of color and women, more acceptance of single mothers, greater religious acceptance for people whose faith isn’t Protestant Christianity (yes, I’m aware Republicans are undoing as much of that as possible). 1890 had more Jesus, therefore it must be more moral. No more need be said.
So there you have it. Two movies. Poles apart in worldview. Yet both dreadful.
“Incredibly funny – Ain’t It Cool News”.
Oh boy.