User Reviews

This is one of the very few Christian films I would recommend to someone. A first and so far best effort by Rich C. to create a good film. The lead was a bit over the top at times (even if that was the intention), but even that intention was taken over the top in certain places.

The message of the story is very applicable and can motivate any Christian to get a move on in their faith, and any non-Christian to either follow Christ or if that doesn't happen, it might bring to light the amount of garbage out there that causes many issues in our society.

Overall a good effort. I can count on one hand the Christian films I can watch over again and would give to someone without twitching, this is one of them. It's not the best Christian film out there, but its worth buying and sharing which is saying something compared to the rest. Good job RC, and good luck on "Sperry."

Criticizing this movie is a little like kicking a puppy that has only three legs and one eye, but the folks responsible for Time Changer probably need constructive criticism more than most of the filmmakers I've reviewed.

Russell Carlisle (D. David Morin) is a professor at a bible college in 1890. He's written a new book and would like the school to give it a recommendation but one professor objects. Norris Anderson (Gavin McLeod) complains about Carlisle arguing that morality should be taught even if it can't be taught in the name of Jesus Christ. To Norris, any moral code that does not openly acknowledge the divinity of Jesus is inherently flawed and dangerous. Carlisle and the rest of the faculty disagree, but Norris' objection is enough to prevent the school from recommending the book. With his publisher anxious for that endorsement and the sales it could generate, Carlisle tries to maneuver around Norris but eventually consents to go the old man's home to try and resolve their dispute. At that meeting, Norris reveals that he has a time machine. Yes, a time machine. Don't ask any questions, you just have to go along with it. He sends Carlisle to the year 2000 to show him what the world would be like when morality and Christianity are no longer synonymous. I'll cut things short by just saying that Carlisle discovers a lot of moral turpitude in our time, all of which is shown as coming from a lack of proper commitment to Jesus, and I think you can guess how the movie ends.

If you find the basic details of the plot offensive, rest assured you'll find a whole bunch more repellent about Time Changer. While not concerned much with doctrine or dogma, this film has a very strict view of the proper role of Christianity in both personal and public life. Let me be blunt. This movie is propaganda for a particular approach to Christianity and how that faith should influence every aspect of existence. If you agree with that viewpoint, you might find this film to be perfectly acceptable family entertainment. If you deviate from Time Changer's viewpoint at all, though, you'll be struck by what bad propaganda it is. And by "bad propaganda", I don't mean it's promoting bad ideas or bad values. I mean it's inept and ineffectual as propaganda.

The world of 1890 was more racist, sexist and classist than 21st century Americans can even understand. The folks of that era accepted as normal the sort of virulent prejudices that would not only get you fired from any job today, but would likely get you a punch in the mouth. Yet, that reality is never acknowledged, let alone dealt with. If a person from 1890 really showed up now, at least some of his religious, social, economic and political beliefs would seem stupid and offensive to the most God-fearing Christians in the modern world. Yet this film pretends that while Carlisle may be old fashioned, his every dislike about the future is correct and his every complaint about our time is righteous. By refusing to recognize that there are some things we think and believe in the 21st century that are better than the ideas of the late 19th, this film makes it impossible for anyone to take it seriously unless you already agree with that ludicrous position.

For example, Carlisle goes into a modern classroom and tells the students that if science conflicts with Scripture, they should believe Scripture over scientific evidence. The teacher gets upset with Carlisle for doing so and the film wants to portray the incident as an example of how religion has been banished from American education. But didn't that whole business with Galileo decide once and for all that the Bible isn't a science textbook? The proposal that science should be simply ignored if it contradicts or conflicts with Christian teaching seems like something with which even Sarah Palin would disagree.

Make no mistake, the folks who made Time Changer quite obviously believe they are only well intentioned. This movie is filled with an earnest concern for the welfare of other human beings that appears totally genuine. And it's not as though all of its criticisms of modern behavior and morality are invalid. But unless you think that 1890 America was some sort of utopia of religious thought and deed, you'll find Time Changer's message utterly unpersuasive.

As for its other aspects as film, Time Changer is a low budget work and it shows. The acting is okay and the dialog and plotting are fine, except for two guys who start investigating Carlisle's background, not because it makes sense for them to do it but because the movie needs to manufacture a little dramatic tension. Overall though, the film-making at work here is decent but unexceptional.

Time Changer won't annoy you because it's badly made. However, you might find it laughable or irksome because it's poorly conceived.

I picked up Time Changer because it looked like a nice low-budget scifi time travel movie and I was in the mood for something like that. The description said it had something to do with some biblical stuff and time travel but I didn't expect a fundamentalist Christian film!

The movie had decent special effects and an interesting premise that could have gone places and been far more interesting than it ended up being. Our hero, who is a bible professor from the 1890s, eventually travels forward to the 2000s and finds that modern life is filled with the influences of evil - Jesus is nowhere to be found. This wonderful technological feat is accomplished with the assistance of a fellow bible teacher who somehow managed to invent a functional HG-Wells-style time machine. The movie starts to lose some credibility at this point, which is unfortunate because this happens very early in the film. Earlier (or perhaps immediately later, can't remember for certain), our hero professor was seen teaching what appeared to be a science class where he claimed that scientific findings could only be considered validated if it could be matched with what the bible says. What should be obvious to anyone is that this is clearly not what the scientific method is about, however it is presented such that the filmmakers appear to prefer the point of view that science is useful only if it supports their claims and otherwise is not useful.

In any case, that belief is perfectly valid and sensible in the context of the character at the time. So, if we accept that as the fact of life for these bible professors, then obviously the professor who went and invented the time machine isn't a very strong believer as I don't think there's any evidence (and none was offered) for the physics of time travel in the bible. So immediately there's a problem with mixed messages and credibility there, but never mind...

After the professor is convinced to take the leap into the future, the shock of modern technology was handled quite well in most cases. It was also fun to not have it pinned down to an exact year (as the character is reading the date off a newspaper to himself, a car honks a horn and it scares him into not finishing the date: it's just two thousand and... *honk*). Some of the shock went on a little too long, though. For instance, the car was one of the first things he encountered when he arrived and around two days later he's invited to a church movie night and takes a ride in a van. He sticks his head out the window like a dog might, is scared by the headlights and the starting engine, etc. That seemed a bit off since he'd been there a few days by this point and the city appeared to be quite busy with traffic. In any case, that's easy to ignore. The rest of the tech shock was well done - especially his first encounter with the TV which was delayed because he didn't even realize what it was until he saw a kid watching one and using a remote.

Unfortunately, our hero predictably starts to preach to virtually everyone he meets as if he's an authority on all life and religion just because he's from the past and is an elder. Eventually he gets himself a brief moment in the spotlight at the church he had been visiting where he proceeds to explain his concept of Christianity to them in a long monologue that was supposed to be moving and insightful, but mostly was just more of the same. A couple of husbands in the church begin to get a funny feeling about this guy (go figure) and investigate his name. They eventually conclude that he either is a time traveler or is impersonating this long dead bible professor and decide to find out which it is. The movie frames these guys as non-believer bad guys for being skeptical.

Just before the professor is to head back to his own time, he is confronted by those two men. In an effort to avoid being arrested or hauled away, he eventually breaks into an almost insane-like rant about how Jesus is coming soon and that he's a prophet so they should listen to him. Just in time, he's whisked away and one of the husbands wonders if perhaps this is the rapture he'd heard so much about.

The irony is that this essentially means the professor became a self-proclaimed (and most likely false) prophet claiming to know that the rapture was near and he was sent by God when truthfully he was sent by his fellow bible professor and did not have any God-given knowledge (that was stated or even hinted at).

As I understand it, Revelation claims that the time of the end is only for God to know and at the end of the film we see the inventor professor trying (and failing) to send a bible into the future. First 2080, then 2070, etc. as the scene fades out. Clearly he's trying to determine the exact date of the end times - which he shouldn't be able to know! Essentially, the entire premise of the movie cancels itself out because by being so insistent on their religious beliefs and how certain things are for God to know only, it means there couldn't ever BE a time machine in the first place because then mankind could find out something that only God should know! The entire movie's premise collapses and makes the whole thing basically worthless as it undermines it's own credibility in the end.

I regret spending an hour and a half of my life watching a film so bad it makes unedited holiday home videos seem entertaining by comparison.

First of all, this was not a movie made for entertainment. It was nothing less than a feature length infomercial promoting extreme fundamentalist Christianity.

If the film's aim is to provoke soul searching among its viewers, the producers sure picked an odd way of doing it. The character of Russell Carlisle is portrayed (in 1990) almost as a caricature, an out of touch buffoon. Would you want your most important message to be delivered by a buffoon? When Carlisle is invited to speak to public school students and asserts to them that "where science and the Bible disagree, it is science that is wrong", this is spoken in harmony with the message of the movie, not as tongue in cheek.

And this is the same message that is being delivered in fundamentalist churches every week and being reinforced in delusional attendees. No wonder they believe "creation science" is actual science and not an oxymoron.

The dialog with Michelle, the librarian, reminds me of the worst banal skits from church camp and vacation bible school. It was the whole, "without Jesus my life was empty and meaningless" platitude.

I truly feel sorry for people who have been ensnared by the deceptive modern fundamentalist movement. It is a far cry from traditional Christianity.

By the way, this film's executive producer is none other than Paul Crouch, head of Trinity Broadcasting Network, in case you had any doubt about the film's agenda.