La stirpe del futuro

Characters you just don't care about. With a story so dull, you would have a cure for insomnia. It's not bad in a good way, its's very bad in a bad way.

This film was obviously doing an X-men thing without having to buy the rights to the famous superhero team. They just threw the time traveling stuff as a bonus. What we get could have worked, but they apparently did not work with the script much as it sort of never really goes anywhere or explains anything. Maybe this thing was supposed to be a pilot for a television show, but it literally tells the viewers as little as possible on its way to its tepid conclusion.

The story, we see some stuff and then a man and a woman walking about and not looking too good. Three years later, Urkel named Roland here draws bad pictures that another man somehow is able to figure out who they are. He contacts a man who exhibits telekinetic powers. Then he finds a woman with the ability to see ever so briefly into the future and then a guy with pyro-kinetic powers. And thus the Y-men are born to combat all those who would deny the next step in human evolution, or something, it really makes no sense as there are two organizations and by the end of the movie I still didn't know what either ones purpose was...

We get a pretty strange cast as Levar Burton is the bad guy, doesn't really work. Malcolm McDowell as a sort of bad guy and Daniel Baldwin as a rather unlikable hero...well that is not fair, not too many likable characters in this film at all and that is probably more due to the crummy script which seemed like they wanted to do something cool, but could not figure how to bring it all home.

So, totally not a good movie as it seems like it wanted to be more, but failed to do so. Not sure if they planned for this to be a series as so many things are left vague, but then again the film ends with everything sort of being done. I just think they were trying to do an X-men film as they have so many elements one finds in their comics, but they were doing it on the cheap.

I always try to find something positive in anything, and here are my thoughts. The movie is weak, but It was pretty well shot for TV (straight to VHS). It could be good series. I disagree with people about cast: all actors are watchable pros. But I disagree even more about X-Men parallels. Old school sci-fi played with these themes many years before Terminator and X-Men. Read some "The Weapon Shops of Isher" by A. E. van Vogt (1951) or early novels by Frederik Pohl. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't recommend this movie to mainstream watchers. But if you have soft spot for TV/VHS low budget sci-fi from 1994-2001, it can be worth checking. It's too short by the way. I give 10/10 for the atmosphere of the dark late 90s.

The main problem with this movie is that most of the actors are out of their league with this kind of genre.

I had not really seen Levar Burton in much else, but he really does NOT have much of a handle on playing the heavy/the villain. Cuz he really stinks up the joint here.

The chick (stacy haiduk) is not too good either.

And the guy who played a role in Seinfeld had best stick to comedy.

Baldwin is not that great, either, although he does a better job than anyone else but Carter, who acts serviceably.

The two "agents" are pretty bad, too!

So basically this movie does not have much in the way of acting.

However it has nice production values and a nice stylish look to it.

And the script is not that bad; not great, but not bad.

Not a bad movie to watch if you have some time to waste, but nothing sepecial.

It's about a time travelling group of children with powers who grew up together but it's also very angsty. There are lots of similarities plot-wise to suspect that Gerard Way saw this and was like "What if this, but good?" before throwing in some X-Men and Doom Patrol along with it for good measure.

You could argue this is a 90s attempt at something like a Doom Patrol, although it is plainly awful. The effects, action and acting are all terrible and there is almost no story when you break it down. Some films are ahead of their time, and some really should not have been made until later, and this is the latter. I'm not saying it would work all that much better, but with a different script, actors, and effects it might have been alright.

Overall you should almost certainly should avoid this. There are a couple of funnily bad moments, but most of it is just dull.