Les Visiteurs du futur

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.

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.

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.

Directed by Barry Samson. Starring Daniel Baldwin, Stacy Haiduk, T.K. Carter, LeVar Burton, Malcolm McDowell, Richard Herd, Page Mosley, David Netter, Trevor Goddard, Tom Poster. (R)

Time travelers with superpowers are hunted by the host of "Reading Rainbow" in this D-grade sci-fi thriller. Baldwin (who couldn't look more like his "30 Rock"-era brother, Alec, even with an assist from deepfake tech) mumbles and mutters his way through the film without a lick of charisma or earnestness; as for Burton, he trades in Geordi's visor for a cowboy hat and looks exactly as threatening with it on as you'd expect. The story tries for twists and turns by presenting the action in a non-linear fashion, but it just makes a muddle of all the goings-on; not even McDowell's hammy villain (which he can do in his sleep) can liven things up. What little action can be found is generic and poorly directed/edited. There are the kernels for a decent genre potboiler here, but don't waste your time scouring this wasteland of entertainment to find them.

17/100

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.