Millenium

Millennium is mixed bag. The script is reasonably good - not too exciting, but thoughtful and well constructed. But there are some problems that drag the movie down.

The romance/relationship at the heart of the story is not bad, and has been unfairly panned. It's actually one of the strengths of the story. Kristofferson does a good job of playing a rather dull character without a lot going for him... a working stiff without much of a life, who wakes up a bit when he meets Cheryl Ladd's character.

Ladd underplays her part nicely, with a nice understanding of the nuances and double meanings of some of her dialogue. The directing is fine, low key, and the editing is good (apart from the ending, which I doubt was the editor's choice). The script sparkles most when it deals with Ladd's character, her difficulties in communicating across a profound cultural barrier, her inadvertently humorous faux pas when interacting with a world very different from her own. The "cigarette scene" in the restaurant is a classic.

There are some problems, mainly around the ending, some of the acting on the part of the minor characters, and the character of Sherman. I won't reveal the ending, but I will say it was disappointing, and probably responsible for the cool reception the film received. The robot Sherman is poorly designed and conceptualized, and drags down the rest of the story. It's not a question of budget, in Sherman's case, but of someone without a good intuitive feeling for science fiction concepts, making decisions about that character. He's not campy, to my mind, he's an embarrassment.

Some people posting here have complained about the dialogue. I think they may be missing the profound reason for Ladd's character's odd choices of words, and what the words reveal about her. Others have complained about the scenes that are shown twice, telling the same story from different points of view. I can understand that people looking for a more action packed movie could have been bored by these scenes, but they do reveal key information; they're not just reruns of the first, they're revelations. They're an effective device for showing the parallel but very different points of view of the key characters.

In sum, Millennium is a reasonably good but not great movie. It's frustrating because a genuinely good movie could be made from the existing footage if the robot was redone (redesigned digitally after the fact and given a better voice and better dialogue), and if the final voice-over was omitted. But I still like watching it and appreciate the elements that are successful in the movie.

Millennium is one the few movies about time travel that stays true to the original source material. This far-out John Varley narrative is brought to the screen as faithfully as can be imagined. If you've ever wondered what really happens during so-called "natural" disasters, this is the script for you. The film is pure science fiction -- fun to watch, but impossible to understand unless close attention is paid. Stay awake and you'll be astonished by this story. Kristofferson and Ladd are surprisingly well paired, and the time-traveling Ladd is 100% believable in this mind-bending scenario. The sole jarring note is the voice-over coda at the end of the film -- an un-credited Churchill quote that sounds comical and out-of-place. This is one of the most under-appreciated movies of the '80s.

The ratings on this movie are very poor, but don't be fooled this is a great movie. As I was watching this movie, I actually expected most people wouldn't get it because time-travel pictures are usually too confusing for people with linear minds. If a movie doesn't travel in a straight line from beginning to end, then linear people start hyperventilating. Time travel concepts require a slightly more abstract mind to follow properly, and more than a 2-second attention span.

There was some good comedy in the movie. For example the android Sherman, who looked like he came right out of a 1950's B-movie. Then there was the joke about how the people from the future had to smoke in order to stay healthy, otherwise the air in the past was too clean and pure for them. You disposed of the cigarettes by just tossing them over your shoulders and a point laser would shoot at it and disintegrate it instantly. Also this was definitely a 1980's movie, you could tell just by the hairstyles, which were good for a few laughs.

And for a movie made on the cheap, the special effects weren't half-bad. They certainly weren't comparable to today's CGI effects, but they were of a generation of special effects that made Star Wars so successful.

Their interpretation of time travel concepts was also very interesting. For example, they chose to represent time paradoxes as "temporal quakes". I suppose this was done as a dramatisation technique to show the audience how serious a temporal paradox was in terms they could commonly understand (i.e. like an earthquake).

Don't be fooled by the linear minds giving this movie a bad review, if you have an abstract mind, then you'll love this movie.

This is a neat "what's going on here" mystery with plenty of clues, if you watch closely. The time travel premise is great and the story is told from the perspective of present day. That is, until the secret is revealed. Then the mysterious parts are retold, in flashback, from the perspective of the future. Kris is OK, Cheryl is wonderful (as usual), and Travanti almost steals the show.

Here's a guilty pleasure for science-fiction buffs: Kris Kristofferson plays a plane crash investigator who becomes involved with a mysterious woman (the smoldering Cheryl Ladd, looking quite the fox); turns out she's a time-traveling visitor from the future who rescues doomed passengers aboard crippled airliners, replacing them with lookalike corpses. Intriguing premise gets a decent treatment on a medium-sized budget. The plot threads are wound fairly tight and the story plays out satisfyingly. Daniel J. Travanti is terrific in support as a wily physicist and time travel specialist with a Cheshire cat-like grin; Kristofferson is quite commendable, and Ladd is frequently amazing. A real sleeper, and an entertaining slice of '80s cinema. *** from ****