821 - TIME CHASERS

Genre:  Low budget Time Travel Sci-Fi (1994, Color)

Synopsis:  A goofball inventor named Nick, who has a huge Dudley Do-Right chin, has invented a time machine using his airplane and his Commodore 64 computer (and I thought those things were only good for games).  He arranges a demonstration for a newspaper reporter named Lisa and a businessman from Evil-Corp, I mean Gen-Corp.  The evil CEO of Gen-Corp, J.K. Robertson, licenses the time travel technology from Nick but when Nick takes his new girlfriend Lisa in the time-plane to the Food Court of the Future for lunch, they discover that the future has been changed and the world is in ruins.  Nick and Lisa present this information to J.K. but he doesn’t think it’s important news and so he tries to kill them.  Nick and Lisa take off in the time-plane to go back to right before the demo to prevent Gen-Corp from ever seeing the plane, but J.K. can somehow read Nick’s mind and he and his men take their duplicate time-plane to the exact same moment in time and shoot down Nick’s plane, killing Lisa in the process.  Future-Nick still tries to get to Past-Nick to prevent the demo, but he is captured by J.K. and taken, along with his Past-mechanic, back to the year 1777 to be killed.  Meanwhile, Past-Nick and Past-Lisa figure out that the wreckage of the plane crash was Nick’s plane from the future and they somehow read J.K.’s mind and also travel back to 1777 to rescue Future-Nick and his Past-mechanic.  In 1777, Future-Nick and Future-J.K. have a showdown that pretty much settles that timeline while Past-Nick and Past-Lisa escape with the Past-mechanic and are able to prevent the demo to Gen-Corp from ever happening.

Don’s Review:  If my synopsis of this movie seems confusing with crisscrossing timelines and time travel paradoxes galore, then you understand already what watching it was like.  M&tBs riff it pretty well and the host segments are excellent, as they deal with Crow traveling back to 1985 to prevent Mike from continuing his Temp jobs and ending up on the SOL. (two of the segments, one with Mike’s jerk brother Eddie on the SOL and another in which Future-Crow gets in an argument with Past-Crow to prevent himself from changing Mike’s future are both absolutely hilarious!)   So a pretty enjoyable episode with better-than-average host segments that’s definitely recommended.

Don’s Rating: