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AaronMichaelGordon.com: Voice of Degeneration

On the dazzling, 1000-year stare of "Millennium."

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This entry was posted on 12/7/2010 10:01 PM and is filed under uncategorized.

I love bad movies that are so bad, they cross over into pure awesomeness. Last night, I happened to luck into a classic "Gleefully Great Bad Movie," the unbelievable "Millennium ." By combining ideas about time travel, ecological protection, existentialism, and 1980s hairstyling, this piece of claptrap never fails to entertain.

Right from the opening credits (which look as if they were rendered on an original Macintosh,) you know this "science fiction epic" is going to be anything but. Kris Kristofferson plays the world's foremost airplane crash expert, whose been discovering a whole bunch of weirdness around his latest crash.

Wait...latest? The way in which this movie presents air travel, planes are falling out of the skies every other week! One of the characters actually says "he's been to several Midwest crashes." Sigh, you can't buy American, you can't fly American...

Daniel J. Travanti shows up, wondering about the weirdness (and lamenting the sad, quick decay of his post-Hill Street Blues career,) which Kris cares nothing about: he just wants to prevent further crashes (good luck with that; the Midwest is apparently riddled with carcasses,) and bone the hot, leggy blonde who keeps showing up.

Said blonde is Cheryl Ladd, who smokes nonstop in this movie. As in entire forests of cigarettes. While eating a salad in one scene (and now you know the secret Charlie's Angels diet.) She smokes so much that Kris Kristofferson, of all people living in Marlboro Country, advises her to lay off, or at least put out one before they screw again.

Let's stop and talk about this for a second. Cheryl, nobody's idea of a great actress, is pushing about 40 here but looks about 30. And hot. Kris, on the other hand, is pushing about 55 here and looks 70. And not. Anyway you slice it, the "romance" just feels off, especially when Cheryl gets all doe-eyed about Grandpa Kris.

Turns out, Cheryl is from 1000 years in the future, where the decay of the Earth has rendered humanity infertile. So, they use their advanced technology to rescue plane crash victims before the crashes, replace them with genetic doubles, send the doomed plane back, and hopefully keep the human race going in their present.

Now, when I explain this, the plot actually sounds cool and smart, which I suspect "Millennium" was, back as a pitch. But in practice? Not so much...and for the better! Let's start with the future. It looks a lot like a movie studio decorated with tubes and trash and "Tron" styled backlighting. There's a "robot," or a man in a Halloween costume and metallic makeup. There are council members, ruling from tubes, rotting away.

And then there's Cheryl's hair, practically its own character in the flick. In the future, it sports a nuclear-Elvis look and height. In the 1989s, it's practically its own raincloud. Frankly, I'm amazed that all that smoking didn't set poor Cheryl on fire. That's a whole lot of hairspray to ignite.

Anyway, I'm not going to give the entire film away, but it really is a laugh a minute. Check it out. "Timequake!"
 

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