Director James Glickenhaus' swan song Timemaster is the kind of story you have seen a million times. You know (takes in deep breath) where interdimensional aliens steal people from parallel universes in order to make them compete in a virtual world death games where people gamble on the matches with their lifeforce that is a blue liquid and this poor kid (Glickenhaus' son Jesse) was orphaned after his parents (Joanna Pacula and Duncan Regehr) were stolen in a post-nuke 2007 America, so with the help of a sympathetic alien (Pat Mortita!) he goes bouncing from world to world to find his mom and dad until he meets the main bad guy (Michael Dorn) and challenges him in a virtual ski race to free his parents, but also wants to stop the nuclear war in his timeline that was set off accidentally in the White House kitchen while saving his sister from growing up to be a biker babe in an alternate timeline. Got all that?
Seriously, what the hell did I just watch? Glickenhaus went out with a bang in terms of production values, but his screenplay is literally all over the place. Lots of famous cult faces show up including Irwin Keyes, Zelda Rubinstein, and "Mean" Gene Okerlund and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (as the announcers of the virtual combat event). It is also one of the first films of Michelle Williams, who plays the love interest of the lead kid. True to his action roots, Glickenhaus does at least pepper in some amazing cliff jumps in the ski sequence. After this film, he left the movie industry to jump into the much more stable world of high-end race car construction.
Seriously, what the hell did I just watch? Glickenhaus went out with a bang in terms of production values, but his screenplay is literally all over the place. Lots of famous cult faces show up including Irwin Keyes, Zelda Rubinstein, and "Mean" Gene Okerlund and Bobby "The Brain" Heenan (as the announcers of the virtual combat event). It is also one of the first films of Michelle Williams, who plays the love interest of the lead kid. True to his action roots, Glickenhaus does at least pepper in some amazing cliff jumps in the ski sequence. After this film, he left the movie industry to jump into the much more stable world of high-end race car construction.