Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Another time-travel movie without the traveling


Frequency
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Cast: Dennis Quaid, Jim Caviezel, Elizabeth Mitchell
Released: 4/28/00
Viewed in theaters: 4/28/00






Like Deja Vu, this movie also deals with going back in time and changing the course of history, but instead of the characters physically going back in time, they communicate via a ham radio. Quaid plays fireman Frank Sullivan in 1969 and Caviezel (who played the bad guy in Deja Vu) plays his policeman son John Sullivan thirty years in the future in 1999. Somehow they are able to talk to each other with the radio while it's '69 on one end and '99 on the other. Of course they're skeptical about who they're talking to at first as would be the case with anyone in this situation. I mean, I don't know which would be more freakier: receiving a phone call from some woman who's claiming to be your mother from 1979 (well, I wasn't even born yet, so I don't know how my mom in 1979 could call me if she didn't know I existed yet, but that's beside the point) or getting a call from someone who claims to be your kid thirty years in the future. Freaky!

John proves to his dad that he's in the future by telling him who wins the next game in the World Series and exactly how the team wins. See, I couldn't do that if I was chatting with someone from the past because I know nothing about baseball or any sport. Hell, I can't even remember who won the last Superbowl. I can't even tell you the two teams who played the last Superbowl! Instead, I would have to make people believe me by who won an Oscar that year ("Trust me, put your money on Marcia Gay Harden, not Kate Hudson," I'd tell them before the '01 Oscars) or who won that season of Survivor or America's Next Top Model.


One thing that didn't make any sense to me was when Frank burns his cigarette on the desk (in '69) and all of a sudden John sees it appear on his desk at the exact moment (in' 99). Okay, wouldn't the burn already have been there since it happened in '69? It wouldn't have just appeared like that in '99.

It had been awhile since I've seen this movie (definitely before Arrested Development aired) and the kid who played John's friend's son looked awfully familiar and I was thinking, That kid looks a lot like Michael Cera, until I realized it was Michael Cera!




Before he was George Michael Bluth

I remembered Elizabeth Mitchell of Lost fame (RIP Juliette) played the mother (and she's actually a couple years younger than Caviezel, heh), but I've become so used to seeing her as a blonde that I didn't remember she was a brunette in the movie.

My favorite scene is when John is talking to his best friend in the past on the radio and he tells him he's Santa Claus and to remember the word Yahoo. I wish I had someone from the future telling me which stock I should invest in!.

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