Parallels

I liked the general premise of this pilot/movie very much. That said the characters' construction was incredibly bad, most of them seemed mentally challenged. If this has aspirations as a TV series (and it has the needed basal stuff) nowadays demanding audiences want more realistic characters, they have to find writers able to deliver closer to life personas. The "we have to find mommy" is far fetched giving the reality the characters are set into and also seems directed to children, but that is barely the tip of the iceberg of the many small but hurting failures it has that could've been credible for a show in the '70, nowadays IMHO is unbearably naïve.

Found this on Netflix highly recommended based on my previous ratings of movies. Watched it. REALLY enjoyed it. Kind of like Sliders meets Lost. But here's the thing--what a total waste. Meant to be a pilot for an entire series, the "movie" so prematurely ended that not even a single mystery was explained. I'm guessing that FOX, once again, gave the axe to a promising series, but enough was filmed that someone just said, "screw it, make it a movie." The pilot is really really good. As a movie, it really really sucked. You can't just write a screenplay for a pilot and call it a movie, it doesn't work like that. It's too bad, because this is a series that I would really love to watch.

It's pretty much Sliders. Timed jumps to other worlds, no (known) way home.

Only it's been TheCW-ed up. In Sliders you had a goofy looking gangly giant, Gimli (middle-later aged bearded professor), a middle-later aged black dude and a petite woman (some replaced later). In Parallels you have four attractive twenty-somethings. In Sliders there's techno-babble and problem solving. In Parallels you just run from stuff and have dramatic moments, usually involving your family. Sliders uses a fixed camera and dolly and whatnot. Parallels uses good ole Shaky- Cam where the camera operator has to deliberately do a bad job, even on tight shots during an exposition scene because that's just the style now.

That said, it's fine. The CW model is simple and it works well enough. And I'm a sucker for a sci-fi premise. The dialogue and situations are cheesy but not cringe inducingly so. Ronan's triangle wasn't good enough to actually put someone to sleep but hey, you could tell what they were going for. It's fine. It's totally fine.

I just finished this on Netflix and I must say it was very entertaining and creative. Obviously the ending is a massive cliffhanger and after reading other reviews and googling it's clear this was meant to be a series.

Well it would be great if this were picked up as an ongoing series but there is another way to complete this if that isn't an option for the creators. It's simple. Two more feature length films that complete the story arc this began.

That gives them room to flesh out the concept, story, characters, and give us some more sweet universe hopping. I specifically want to know what the triplets are all about.

I'd recommend this, buy, and stream the next films/season. I assume many others will as well.

Whoever may read this that has the ability to get the ball rolling I encourage you to do so.

I will fail this film for on reason only: it was conceived as a TV show pilot and it failed, so they released it as a movie. That means ending with a huge cliffhanger and explaining nothing.

Not everything else was cool, either. There were some clear TV like story fixes and the classic "I am here, I have all answers, but I am going to go because I have important stuff to do" trope, as well as some poor scripting.

However, the rest was OK. Acting was reasonable, direction and special effects, too. The scripting left a little to be desired, but not much.

Bottom line: a clear rip-off of Sliders. At the end of the film you are left with the same premise: "you can't ever go home, but you can always try". The characters, though, are some kids with no training or experience (except punching people for one of them). If this would have been taken on as a series, I would have watched it, but then again, I watch all kind of crap.