The Philadelphia Experiment

This was a very disappointing movie. I give it two starts for introducing a completely different storyline from the first movie, but it isn't much of a story, its more of a one-liner. The concept of a time traveling ship has so many possibilities and many of these were used with great success in the original movie. It had a bit of science, not much but enough to make you wonder. It had humor, warmth and characters you cared about. This movie doesn't have any of this. The new movie just takes the ship and uses it as a prop. The cinematography also blows, very few shots are of movie-quality, this movie is basically an extended TV-series episode. Do not watch this movie if you have a brain. -Spoiler alert: The core of the movie is a science experiment gone wrong, to fix it the "bad guys" will solve it by shooting/bombing it. There's a ton of shooting and bombing in this movie and the "bad guys" are lead by an over zealous hot chick hell bent on some kind of death rage on the involved characters. Thats all she is. One dimensional.

A group of scientists trying to create a cloaking device accidentally conjure up the USS Eldridge, a ship that disappeared in 1943. Now their only priority is to send it back. While I did not see the 1980s version of this story, I am familiar with what allegedly happened in real life. I think this is a fine plot of what could have happened, even if it does not necessarily make logical sense. Director Paul Ziller is SyFy's go-to guy and has made quite a few of their productions now, with varying degrees of success. I feel like Ziller really has a handle on how to make a low-budget science fiction film, as he has the formula down. The weakest part is always the special effects (the computer-generated effects), which are out of his control. Of course, this film also suffers from having Emilie Ullerup, one of the worst actresses in the history of the universe. Her character is a bit hard to believe (a world-class hacker working as a waitress in a small town diner), but even if we accept that, Ullerup just kept overacting repeatedly. I felt no sympathy for her and think the film would have been much better if her scenes were just cut out completely. And why did the police officer wear jeans?

Decent remake of the 1984 film mainly just takes the basic plot and takes it into a new direction so those who loved the original movie and its love story can rest easy. In this version, a government agency is doing work on the original Philadelphia Experiment when something goes wrong and the ship Eldridge ends up floating around in time. The sole survivor (Nicholas Lea) ends up getting off the ship in 2012 and teams up with his granddaughter (Emilie Ullerup) to try and find out what's going on and how to stop it. I actually thought that the first hour of this film was better than anything in the original movie but sadly the final thirty-minutes start to go overboard but in the end we're still left with a fairly impressive movie and especially considering it aired on SyFy. What I enjoyed most about the first half is simply the confusion of the Bill Gardner character as he tries to figure out what went wrong in the 1943 experiment and how it has gotten him placed in 2012. I thought the early scenes between him and his granddaughter were quite entertaining and I thought the action scenes that followed with the two were well directed. The problem happens when the super secret government people start to show up with murder in their eyes and this is when the first loses its brain and fall off track. I'd say the superhuman powers that Gardner receives is also something that didn't work too well. I thought both Lea and Ullerup were extremely good in their roles and their performances made the film all the more enjoyable. Malcolm McDowell has a quite cameo but is a lot of fun and the original star Michael Pare is also on hand here so that should thrill fans of the 1984 film. I had just watched the original film days before this one and I said that the material was so strong that it really needed a bigger budget to fully capture everything it could. That didn't really happen with this movie as there's still something better that could come from the material but this here is still worth

Had I known that this movie was from SyFy, I would've left this one on the shelf. SyFy is developing a rather disconcerting tendency to use absolutely horrid animation. Additionally, the low budget of the films they produce preclude the use of any type of technical advisors. Using Army rank insignia on a supposedly Naval uniform is a big NO NO! And his "wash khakis" look as if they came off the shelf at K-mart. USS Eldridge should not be plastered all over the ship, nor the hull number. And when Eldridge fell from the sky onto the building, the resulting impact would've broken her back. This one is going directly to the pawn shop so I may recoup some of the money I spent on this abomination.