Time Raiders

When the scion of a family of tomb robbers discovers the key to an ancient tomb, his uncle refuses to take him along. Tomb robbing isn't for people with university degrees -- obviously none of their relatives has seen an Indiana Jones movie. However, the youngster sneaks his way into the affair and finds himself in the midst of a four-sided fight for the tomb.

For most of its length TIME RAIDERS is an interesting if derivative sort of work that you can slide into effortlessly. It shows good storytelling technique and intersperses some decent gags into its CGI-laden moments of fear and terror -- those bugs really are nasty -- even if I was occasionally bemused at the effortless way in which the Cyclopean mechanisms of the tomb operate after four hundred years of neglect. For me, a brand-new can opener comes apart the first time I use it. However, the climactic battle loused things up for me, as people were able to calculate to the instant to whack that chain with a sword to make it carry them to a rare moving spot of safety, or to shoot a moving nail head in the midst of chaos from a couple of hundred yards. I found the suspension of disbelief needed for fantasy snapped.

Up until then, however, it's fairly good. It resumed its decent technique after the battle, but by the it was too late.

This is a great idea badly executed. What was supposed to be an action adventure ends up being downright silly and unbelievable. The film has some really great visuals and them some not so great. Some good photography and then some weird photography. The film had so much potential but it suffers from a poor script and actors that just doesn't seem determined enough. This played like a stage production and was not believable as a film. Whenever there was excitement, it was ruined by silly humor, deeming the scenes more slapstick than serious or suspenseful. Uhm, no, it had absolutely no suspense - even during scenes that should have been. The film was laughable at times, and I don't mean in a humorist way. It was just stupid. Oh, and a flute makes everything all right...oh whatever...

The film's climax looked more like a video game, became very weird, and with CGI-overload nothing was believable. By that time I had completely lost interest anyway and couldn't wait for someone or all of them to die so the film could end.

A Chinese delve in an "Indiana Jones" and "Tomb Raider" similar universe. An entertaining enough movie for what it turned out to be, surely, but it just wasn't a particularly memorable movie.

I gobble up almost all Asian movies I get the chance to watch, and having read the synopsis for "Time Raiders", then I must admit that my interest was stirred and I was somewhat anxious to sit down and watch it.

However, while the movie does boast some pretty nice special effects and CGI effects, it just suffers from having a generic script and some equally generic characters. The storyline was rather simple, yet easy to follow; you just watch the action, and you're up to speed. However, "Time Raiders" didn't turn out to be anywhere near "Indiana Jones", nor "Tomb Raider" for that matter.

Boran Jing and Lu Han do perform well and manage to keep the movie being somewhat entertaining and watchable. But they alone just couldn't manage to lift up the movie from being less than mediocre.

"Time Raiders" is adequate enough entertainment for a single viewing if you have nothing better at hand to watch. However, don't get your hopes up too high, because this wasn't really much of a memorable experience. The movie does have some good enough action and some good enough adventure, but you are just left with sort of a hollow feeling in your gut once the movie is over. There was just something missing from the movie; that one all-important spice. There are far better Chinese movies available.

My rating of "Time Raiders" is a less than mediocre four out of ten stars.

Maybe I have too much expectations, but I doubt this was a low budget film. It's 2016 and the CGI looks like it was from the 90s. The opening of the moving leading up to the middle of the movie was decent. Then there after, everything was just ridiculous. It's simply not worth the time to watch. Be prepared to be disappointed.

We owe an apology to the nine-story monster tower. Plus, please don't play any more movies. Nausea.