Millennium

-Artisan Entertainment (1989)

Summary

The time traveling exploits of Kris Kristofferson and his beard.

My Thoughts

I've always seen this movie hanging out in the bowels of the video stores and in the bottom of bargain bins, unpicked and unloved. It's always been one of these films that seemed like I may like it for its hidden qualities, but it also looked like it could be simply awful. Finally, my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to break down and watch it.

This film is based on a short story by John Varley called “Air Raid.” In fact, lucky John even got to write the screenplay based on his own short story, something that is pretty rare these days. It's been years since I read the short story, but from what I remember it was a clever idea with a little bit of plot around it. Nothing too extravagant, but it made you think.

Millennium is another matter. I'm split on whether this can actually be called a good film or not. It was enjoyable on several levels, but it also had its fair share of problems.  Millennium is an attempt at a smarter sci-fi film. It takes the idea of time travel and plays with it in an effort to make us think about the repercussions of human actions on the environment and ultimately time itself. The downside is that it's a slow moving and pretty cheap looking film.

Millennium begins with a commercial jet crashing with some strange events happening as its about to hit the ground. The best portion of the film covers this mystery and the following investigation. This isn't surprising, because that's what the short story "Air Raid" is all about. But, once this period of the film is over we get the story of Louise, played by Cheryl Ladd. Her story fills in a lot of the blanks from earlier in the film, much in the way 12 Monkeys twists and turns its way around towards answering the questions that it creates. Unlike the much superior 12 Monkeys, this film's tone isn't in line with the subject matter. The future is shown as a bleak place, yet the music and some of the dialogue doesn't reflect it very well. I'm not saying everyone wouldn't have humor in a horrible future, but the script is inconsistent in the way it handles its bleak subject matter.

Another problem with Millennium is that you never really get to see the Hell of the future. You certainly get to see some shades of it, with the sick looking people in tanks and in wheelchairs, and you also get an impression about what some of the characters say about it, but you never really truly get to actually see it first hand. I'm sure the film had a limited budget, and showing shots of how regular people tried to live might have been too expensive, but it is also a crucial thing for the audience to get a sense of understanding about how awful the world had become. You also don't get to see what the people where brought for. In the short story it explains what will happen to them a lot better, but in the film they are just standing around in pens.

When Louise goes back in time to the earlier events of the film there’s a lot of humor in the way she behaves, because she's a stranger to our time. This creates a lot of humorous situations, but it also leaves me wondering why Kristofferson's character fell for her so badly. She's attractive, but there are so many indications that she's a freak or a psycho. Although he did indicate he hadn't had sex since he divorced his wife, so perhaps he wanted to just get her in the sac, but then he accidentally fell in love with her.

One of Millennium's biggest flaws is its cheap looking visuals. Some of the effects are great, and the designs are excellent, especially the decaying elders. The elders are rotting humans that are literally stitched together. My biggest gripe is that we only really get to see a lot of the one speaking with a focused shot on her and the others are mostly silent and off camera. What really brings this film down are the horribly ugly robot servants. These robots are some of the worst robots in sci-fi history, in fact they rank a close second to Box in Logan's Run. This isn't a far leap either, the director, Michael Anderson also directed that sci-fi epic as well. He must have a thing for stupid looking ugly robots.

If that isn’t enough film trivia for you, John Varley also wrote the worst piece of crap I’ve ever seen called Overdrawn at the Memory Bank. If you’re a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan at all I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s the film with Raul Julia in a future world that consists of a mall, a fat guy, and a really bad take off of Casablanca. This horrid mess made for one of the best Mystery Science 3000’s I’ve ever seen.

*****Spoiler Alert*****

The film's ending kind of had me baffled. I liked the fact that you didn't know what was going to happen to all of the people when they went through the gate, but it wasn't emphasized that in all actuality it could have been a very bad thing. Instead, we are left with a symbolic voice over by the dumb looking robot and a naked Chris Kristofferson and Cheryl Ladd. Cheryl Ladd naked I can handle, but not so much Chris Kristofferson.

I also seemed to miss something when it came to the professor. Why in the hell did he kill himself? I didn't understand his reasoning at all. It didn't seem like it was a mistake either, he seemed to know what he was doing at the time. I thought it was almost nonsensical that someone would kill themselves after finding out their lives work was correct.

*****End Spoiler Alert*****

The "hidden" alternative ending doesn't add a whole lot to the film either. It actually shows a lot less than the final one. I prefer this ending, since it leaves things a little more up in the air as to what happened to everyone.

Extras

One thing that shocked the hell out of me from the moment I put the disc in was that the film actually had some motion menus. Not only does the disc have motion menus, but they are actually pretty good ones at that.

The biggest minus for this DVD is that it isn't in Dolby Digital 5.1. The digital 2.0 mix is very good, but I still love a good 5.1.

The DVD also has the standards of a cheap DVD like production notes and cast and crew information. The cool addition to these two features is that they are actually read by a narrator instead of just plain text. Also, at the end of the production notes there’s the alternative ending.

Score:

Film: 7.0

Extras: 6.5

Someone took at least a little extra time putting the DVD together.

Edition: 6.5

-Paul