1980 historical time travel movie
Rating: 13/20
Plot: An aircraft carrier from 1980 is transported to December 6, 1941. Apparently, something important happened on December 7th, but I’m not enough of a history buff to know what that would be.
Random things I was distracted by while watching this movie:
1) The title–I couldn’t get the Europe song out of my head. Obviously.
2) This reminded me of the game Battleship and how easy it was to cheat. “B3,” guesses your opponent. Well, B3 was a hit until I just inconspicuously lifted my aircraft carrier off the board and put it someplace else. So, miss. Anyway, I kept wondering if that was going to be the surprise twist ending with this movie.
Lloyd Kaufman, of Troma infamy, executive-produced this and has a small part. It’s not a tongue-in-cheek movie at all though. In fact, it’s about as straight as it comes. I wish it would have tackled the ethics a little more. Here are characters who are faced with a moral dilemma about whether to change history and what the implications of that might be. Martin Sheen brings up the grandfather paradox like he knows what he’s talking about, and the characters discuss the rights and wrongs of the whole thing a little bit, but there was so much more that could have been done with the idea. And it’s hard to take Martin Sheen seriously because he looks a little too much like Charlie Sheen in this one. I really liked the concept here, but it just doesn’t go anywhere.
I will say this–this is one of the few time travel movies I’ve seen during my Time Travel Movie Fest where the characters don’t do anything that would create the paradoxes that often sink these types of movies or at least confuse people. For the most part, their little adventure doesn’t change anything at all. I had to give it a bonus point for that.
Of course, that might be what makes the movie a little boring. It’s a cool concept, but they go nowhere with it. They could have played with alternate time lines and other funky time-travel things. I suppose the budget limited them a bit. There’s one scene that shows modern fighter jets and Japanese kamikaze pilots, shots that are almost surreal. I guess in 1980, it would have been hard to pull off a reinvention of Pearl Harbor with all these modern weapons.
Speaking of weapons, there’s a lot of military fetishism going on here. This was made with the cooperation of the Navy according to the credits, and about 40% of the movie is just showing off the Navy’s toys. With the over-the-top music, it started to feel like an advertisement for our military after a while.
I liked the time warp thing in this even if it was an antiquated special effect. The time travel itself is screechy and warped. It was pretty cool. But even though this movie won’t be difficult to remember, it’s not really because any of it is especially memorable.
Note: I have never lost a game of Battleship, probably because my little plastic ships frequently time-traveled.
