People! Listen to me!
I, The Self-Made Critic XVI, am taking advantage of the bizarre planetary alignment that is happening in my current time period, which is 2675 AD, to speak to you back in the past. The way this bizarre planetary alignment works, I can only speak to those of you who lived the last time this bizarre arrangement occurred, which was in the year 2000. So hear me, and beware your fate!
It all started with the motion picture Frequency, which starred Dennis Quaid and James Caviezel, and was released back at the end of April in the year 2000. History remembers this movie as being good, indeed, quite good.
Frequency told the story of a father and son who, thanks to some wacky sunspot activity, were able to talk to each other 30 years apart on a ham radio. Son in 1999 tells Dad in 1969 how to zig instead of zag in an abandoned warehouse, and changes history. Dad, who was supposed to zag and therefore die in 1969, zigs and lives. But now, Mom, who was happy and old in 1999, is dead and decomposing. Turns out that since Dad lived in 1969, Mom got killed by a serial killer. (Trust me, it made perfect sense in the movie.) So now Son in 1999 helps Dad in 1969 catch the killer and save Mom.
This was a good movie, and the whole weird ham-radio-through-time thing is pretty believable. The beauty of time travel movies is that they make you think. This movie was no exception. What if it could really happen? What if you could change the past? What would become of the future if you changed the past? Would it be half as cool? Twice as cool? Totally uncool? The possibilities and levels of coolness are limitless!
And while nobody ended up sleeping with their own grandfather in Frequency, it was still a good romp.
But then Hollywood got greedy, and all Hell broke loose.
Thanks to the well deserved moderate success of Frequency, they made a sequel. James Cavezulu returned as Son, but this time, he's the one in the past talking to Leonardo DiCaprio, who plays Grandson (Son's Son), 30 years in the future. Instead of the ham radio thing, they had Leo DiCaprio and James Cavezanzibarrel communicate via a mysterious internet chat room thanks to an unexplained disruption in a DSL line. The movie was so horrible, it caused stock to fall, riots to break out, and entire nations to collapse. The Earth was left in ruins and Man was forced to revert to the stone age, subsisting on a diet of mealworms, rotten cabbage and bamboo shoots. Man fell to fourth on the food chain, just under lemmings, but right above midgets. It was only in the late 2500s that we were again able to call ourselves Masters of the Planet.
Life in 2675 is simple. But with this bizarre planetary alignment, I've decided to try to warn you in 2000. Don't let a sequel be made! See the first movie, but protest and storm the studios when they start making the sequel! Please! You are humanity's last hope!
Oh, looking back through the archives, I see that Frequency got 3 5/6 Babylons. Not that I have any idea what Babylons are, but history tells us that these movies were rated on a scale of 1 to 5. It doesn't matter, my job here is done.
Gimme one of those ham radios and a sunspot and I'll make sure that some guy with a camaro runs over the SMC in 1972.
Frequency
Rated: PG-13
Directed By: Gregory Hoblit
Starring: Dennis Quaid, James Cavazenazagazuga, Andre Braugher, Shawn Doyle,
Noah Emmerich and The Amazin' Mets!