It’s time for a movie that’s definitely more on the disappointing side. It’s not like I had massive hopes for it or anything like that but a film about time travel should always be exciting. Instead this one was just more of a let down. A lot of the time there was nothing going on in the movie and it felt like the story was constantly stalling for time. That is absolutely not the right way to make a good impression and so even the ending doesn’t land as well as it should have.

The film starts with a bunch of scientists working on their time device. They want to be able to peer into different time periods but they are using up a lot of energy and have no results. Danny is sent in there to tell them to cut it out but they try one more test. This time it works, only better than they expected. The “window” doesn’t just let them view other times, it actually lets them jump in as well. Now they are all trapped in the future with no way to get home. This is already bad but it turns out that the world is about to end. They will have to rely on the help of other scientists from the future who are rather suspicious.

The story sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is. You’ve got a whole race of brutes running across the planet and then you have “Deviants” who are part brute, part human. Stuff happened along with the mass bombing of the planet that caused people to not develop so much and this really split humanity. There’s a story somewhere in here about rebelling against this tyranny but there’s just no time. We already missed the collapse of modern civilization and these are the last scientists on the planet either way.

The brutes are also surprisingly weak. Guess how the main characters get them to go away…..they throw rocks at them. Yeah this is enough to make them retreat. It really makes no sense no matter how the film tries to spin it. I couldn’t believe how the whole crowd backed off from the main fighters because of this. There are some action scenes once in a while during the movie but never for long. You don’t need this for a time travel movie but at the same time it means that I couldn’t really take the villains all that seriously.

Then we also have some random fanservice near the middle of the movie. The scene has absolutely no point being in here and you could say that about quite a few other scenes. The film takes us through the long process of building and fixing androids. I imagine they will have been doing this for a very long time because these androids are super flimsy. I’d trust Flippy the modern burger A.I. over some of these things. The brutes destroy them with ease. Couldn’t the scientists have taught the robots to throw rocks or something?

Now in part this is a problem with the film being so old but the so called high tech civilization don’t really feel that advanced. They’re also not very reasonable but that’s just human nature so I could roll with that. The only thing I will defend them on is not wanting to alter the plan to leave the planet. They already spent years getting the perfect window set up and it’s reasonable to assume that they would be obliterated by the villains if they stay for much longer. So it sucks for the main scientists but they can’t exactly wait for them.

This could all be very fascinating if you didn’t have to sit through 20 minutes of comedy music while the heroes walk around the base doing nothing. It felt like the script for this film was only around 30 minutes so they really had to stretch this for as long as possible. Not a good idea by any stretch of the imagination. Again, the story itself is very interesting but it was executed in the worst way possible. The film’s biggest error is really that it can just get rather boring at times. That shouldn’t be possible for a time travel film. It should be extremely engaging and fascinating the whole time.

The pacing is just so bad. The film’s not even very long but it sure feels like a lengthy epic as a result of the decisions made here. I was shaking my head the whole time. Lets quickly list the cool concepts the movie had that weren’t explored much at all. 1. The warring factions with the brutes, 2. The poor guy in the middle of this who is shunned by humans and monsters. How did he even break into the ship? 3. The guy who was trigger happy from the future scientists. I felt like he was going to get a much bigger role, etc. There was a ton of meat left on the table for this movie.

The only part of the film that I will give some decent credit for being original is the ending. Sure, it’s something you may have seen before in some way or another but it’s not an option that tends to be picked. So actually seeing this ending was pretty fun and makes a whole lot of sense. It all depends on the rules for time travel that the verse picks but this is one that’s always interesting and works to prevent any kind of a paradox. The ending alone isn’t worth watching the film of course but if you are intrigued, this could help enhance the movie just a little bit.

Overall, The Time Travelers is not a very good film. It spends way too much time on filler moments and not actually advancing the plot. Every time the heroes would take a break to just marvel at the future I would get annoyed. Particularly since none of the stuff was all that impressive either. None of the characters really stand out either and the film’s weak attempt at a romance here falls flat. Yeah you’re really not missing much by skipping this film. It will ultimately stay forgotten.

Overall 4/10