User Reviews

Other reviews have synopsized the plot well enough, so I won't belabor it. On the plus side, this plays better then 90% of the SciFi channel's made for TV movies (but then, what doesn't?) It even has a couple of clever touches that you wouldn't expect the hero to be bright enough to think up in a split second. So what was wrong with it?

[..spoiler alert..]

What happens when the hero returns to his 1994 could be more fascinating than anything else in the movie. After all, he has a dire warning of how dangerous this technology can be, yet despite the appearance of the professor at the end, there's nothing in the plot to indicate that he story would be taken seriously. Sure he went away, but all his potential evidence went away along with the alternate universe unless he managed to bring some 1993 Nazi American souvenirs back with him - and there's nothing to suggest he did. Who's he going to warn them about? The bad guy got sucked into cosmic nothingness after the hero shot his father in 1943, so none of the setup ever happened in this time line!

But that's almost a minor quibble. Where this show really lost me was when he returned and they had the heart-warming scene of him reuniting with his kid, I thought to myself, "Surely, they wouldn't be dumb enough to have the girl show up in this time line!" Well, they did. Think of it... She was obviously born in the 60's sometime. Yet, if Hitler had nuked Washington, DC in 1943 and won the war, what would be the chances that her parents would have ever gotten together in this time line? In a show like this, you just have to know how long to expect your audience to suspend their disbelief. (Also, the other person was right about the F117 not having sufficient range to bomb the US from anywhere in Europe without mid-air refueling.)

Still, the part about his getting rid of the villain by killing his father was great - probably the best thought out part of the whole show. Of course, it lost a little since the only dialog that sets up the fact that the kid was born after 1943 was in German. What's the point of writing clever stuff if the average English-speaking viewer can't understand it?

Science Fiction sequel to the minor hit "The Philadelphia Experiment", again based on time travel but with quite a different plot. There isn't really a lot to recommend this movie but a few things livened it up to bearable:

• The story is potentially interesting, with the same idea as The Man in the High Castle (Philip Dick).

• some of the cinematography is somewhat interesting; it's way over the top for a direct-to-video C grader! Ronn Schmidt seems to have done a lot of other work and obviously let himself have some fun here. Unfortunately the blurry slow-motion at the end is quite bad and almost negates the good stuff.

• Half Life! The scenes where the hero is running from the helicopter, are in some interesting industrial ruins that reminded me quite a bit of the game Half Life 2. Likewise, the machinery for the time/stealth machine.

However, this is all put together in the dreariest fashion imaginable, with a rather small budget, and the film contains quite long periods where nothing much happens. A good editor might do something with it, but then the movie is not very long as it stands.

In conclusion, not very good despite some potential.

THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT 2 is a cheesy, TV movie-style follow up to the 1984 movie that features one returning character from that film, although his role has been recast. The story is updated to 1993, where another military experiment opens another hole in time, this time leading to an alternate reality in which the Nazis won the war.

The whole staging is what lets this cheesy, family-friendly film down. Aside from a typically fun Gerrit Graham in support, the cast is below par and distinctly underwhelming, particularly the bland lead, Brad Johnson, they've picked for the role. The film features similarly underwhelming CGI effects which look extremely dated to a modern viewer, and a plot that merely goes through the motions again rather than innovating. I found it a bore.

(This review assumes the reader has seen the movie, this is my spoiler warning)

I first saw the movie when it was released in 1993. I was 11 or 12 at the time. Being mostly dialogue driven, I remembered very little of it. The part I did remember that stuck with me was where the stealth was sent back, and how the house interior changed in the snap of a finger with his son disappearing, and the way he runs outside and stops in shock of a landscape that went from a beautiful southern California environment to a post-war industrial wasteland with old abandoned factories looming in the background. -- Seeing it again 20 years later, the actor portrayed the characters emotions pretty much how I would of felt in the situation.

This might sound dorky, but what made me want to see it again was to catch the dialogue. That stuff didn't interest me at age 12. My main question being why the villain would still want to create the time machine and what exactly happened to the stealth.

Though the movie doesn't *show* the 50 years of history, the dialogue let my imagination fill in the blanks about how the world transformed into what it was. The scene where David meets Longstreet in the alternate 1993 was rather profound in answering those questions. The way Longstreet's actor explains the events, and the way David sits silently trying to process everything before and after being handed the photograph of the stealth was done pretty authentically. I felt like I was in David's shoes processing the information, visualizing what happened. Imagining the events just as if I was reading a book. This might not work for younger audiences who like to be shown dazzling scenes vs using their imagination...but I kind of like movies that let me think for myself.

The movie has its flaws, the acting in the rest of the movie isn't the greatest, but again what made me appreciate it was being able to relate to the character as he's trying to make sense of the world that transformed unexpectedly around him. We know that a stealth was sent back, though considering he did not know this (until much later), makes his performance believable.

I can't compare this to the first movie. I watched it out of curiosity but it wasn't of me. This one felt more like a stand alone original than a movie sequel.

Let's start off the original with Micheal Pare was great. I mean there was a better story, better effects, and acting.

This movie starts off about 10 years after the other one left off. David Herdeg now has a son now and is a single dad. I can't remember if his wife passed or left him. Anyway there's a scientist, Dr. William Mailer played by Gerrit Graham. Who guess again is messing with a project similar to the Philadelphia Experiment. Every time he messes with the timeline David is effective with nose bleeds, and time bends a little. Well the evil doctor succeeds and sends a plane back to the past. The plane goes back to when his (Mailer's) German dad is working on the a similar project. Well when the plane goes back so does David into a alternate present. Germany is running the states, there is a uprising group that fight's the Germans.

Can't tell you how it ends cause that would ruin it.

On a funnier note Graham plays 3 parts which is pretty much the best acting/parts of the movie. He plays Dr. William Mailer (present/alt-present) and his dad Friedrich Mahler. There is one part where he's dressed up like a cowboy reminds me so much of Marshal Lucky from Used Cars. I was waiting so many time's to hear "That's to d*mn high" and something blow up.

Brad Johnson's acting is really, really bad in this film. That's why I'm stating the best parts are anything with Graham in it, or the flashbacks to the original movie.

One thing I don't get/understand is there is German spoken but no subtitle's. I still don't know what was said in the ending of the movie.

These days it seems that filmmakers are not short on ideas of how to take an amazingly awesome idea for a movie and turn it into something that deserves to be flushed down the toilet. In fact, I think watching water swirling around in the toilet is more exciting than this movie. I like science fiction. I like time travel. I like the military. I enjoy stories about World War II. And most of all, I am from Philadelphia and I love that city. This movie has all 5 of these things going for it. So why did it suck so much? I would have to say the movie dragged on way too much. This could have been half as long. It just was not exciting. There was not even any interesting dialog. I just did not get any emotions activated at all during this film. It's just so long and boring and dry I cannot really say more than that. I can't fault the writer because the story idea is awesome. It was just so poorly done on so many levels that everyone involved has to share part of the blame. My advice? Stop with the original Philadelphia Experiment. That is an excellent piece of science fiction military film-making. If you waste your time on this film, it's your own dumb fault. I seriously considered giving this film a 1 star rating, but I refrained because I reserve that rating for movies that usually cause me to get angry at myself for watching them. This film's saving grace is that it was a really good idea, just very poorly executed. There were times during the film where I contemplated watching paint dry. But hey, you can always go flush your toilet and watch the water go round and round.

See my profile for my rating philosophy.

I am NOT a fan of sequels. You must understand, they are usually made with only one idea in mind, cash-in on the original.

The original of P.E. is a favorite of mine. But why do I like this one?

Probably because so many people hated it, right? Not quite. I don't blind go against the grain for spite, or root for the underdog against all logic.

This is a really nicely done "original" in it's own right. The story enveloped me. I connected the dots, and I did NOT compare this with the original. What would be the point after 9 years?

Cromwell and the staff of writers (there are a few) concocted a truly interesting story. So why was this a flop in most eyes? I really cannot say but - here is my theory: it didn't have Michael Paré in the first place. That's immediately plausible. No characters or actors from the original. So what? But beyond that:

BRAD JOHNSON did a fine job in carrying the movie. He is a strong actor with a nice quiet (generically quiet) exterior, but pleasing demeanor. He brought sympathy to the character without being maudlin. MARJEAN HOLDEN landing this role was a stroke of luck. Her gritty female was not done "over the top" like many boring "gritty females" in action flicks who are asked to done guerrilla garb. She was written with more dimensions than that! Thank goodness Courtney Cox walked out of this role. She would have been terrible - even distracting to say the least! GERRIT GRAHAM was spot on as the "villain(s)" of this story. He was menacing without being a comic strip character like so many usually are in these type of movies.

The concept of changing the result of World War II as a story line has been used many times before, BUT HERE, it was not pushed and prodded with the countless Nazi stereotypes we are usually FED to by Hollywood poorest writers. Here the Nazi machine was done matter of course. Much more realistic, I'd say.

Although I would admit that with movies like this we can usually tell what the ending should be and will be without much thought, nevertheless the telling was absorbing...the pace of the story was SLAM BANG in your FACE all the time. That can get tiresome. Here it was a welcome change of story over violence that served it well.

All in all, give the movie a chance, the first 10 minutes, as another reviewer explained, needs to be experienced, as offbeat as you might think it is. Or as unnecessary as you would think it is, it does bring us up to date with an alternative storyline with compelled me to write this review in the first place.

Enjoy it without expectations and you might be surprised at how it reels you in. It won't blow you away with effects and endless moments of nonsensical action and it won't change your life, but it will be a nice time spent.