Time Toys is an interesting movie because I didn't think they made movies like this anymore. It's the kind of movie that my siblings and I would've watched when I was in my early teens circa 1997 to about 2002 or 2003. In fact, it reminds me a lot of a cross between Jonathan Frakes's 2002 Sci-Fi action/comedy film Clockstoppers, and The Goonies. It's cheesy, obviously made for kids, and a lot of fun to watch.
I came across Time Toys when, out of curiousity, I went on IMDB and looked up what Ed Begley Jr. had been in besides the third season two part Star Trek: Voyager episode, "Future's End" and being a recurring role as Eric Camden's brother-in-law in 7th Heaven. Sure enough, this movie popped up as one of his most recent movie appearances. After reading the synopsis for the movie, I decided to check it out and bought it on iTunes. From the synopsis I knew what I was getting into with this movie. I wasn't expecting amazing dialogue or a solid story. What I was expecting was a goofy, fun, cheesy kids' movie that was in the vein of films like The Goonies, Big Fat Liar, and Clockstoppers and to a lesser extent Spy Kids and Agent Cody Banks. Basically any high concept kids movie from the '80s, '90s or early 2000s. And that is exactly what I got when I watched this movie last night.
Since there are probably many of you who have never seen this movie or have even heard of it before, Time Toys is about four boys who are in middle school who stumble upon a box of toys from 25 years in the future after a wealthy, but selfish, businessman pulls the box into the present, now the past since this movie was made in 2015 and released in 2016, thinking it contains plans and schematics for a future jet fighter that he can use to conquer the world. All four boys have issues and they use the toys to overcome them. There's Matt who has a crush on a girl named Jenny, who happens to be the stepdaughter of the antagonist of the film, Billy Weller, but is too shy to go up and talk to her because she always seems to hang out with Bryce, the boy who bullies Matt and his friends all the time. There's Boomer who is your stereotypical geek who has no confidence in his physical abilities and has anxieties about everything, Eddie, who is tired of getting beaten by Bryce at Basketball at school, and Mel, who is ashamed that he isn't as smart as his friends are. The boys decide to stop Weller, with the help of Ed Begley Jr.'s character, Wiz, and Jenny, once Matt, through a mask that can change his face to look like a teen idol, gets up the courage to talk to her.
Time Toys doesn't do anything new with this plot or these characters. Wiz is the disgruntled mentor figure who got booted out of his job because his boss is evil, the boys are the interchangeable reluctant heroes who start out as losers and outcasts and overcome their difficulties to save the world, Jenny is the girl who on the surface seems superficial and goes along with the crowd, but inside loves Science Fiction, learning and the deeper meanings for things and people, and Weller is the typical mad scientist businessman villain who wants to take over the world and claims he's doing it to save the world from itself. Like I said, nothing that we haven't seen a thousand times in books, movies and TV shows.
The difference though is that unlike the dozens of teen movies that grace our screens, this one is 100% wholesome. There's no sex, no swearing, no whiny teenagers on quests to find items to help them save the world, and there's no agenda. It's just a simple movie about kids saving the world from the greed of their elders. I thought that it was refreshing as I thought movies like this had been relegated to the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon back in the mid to late 2000s when movies like Twilight and the later Harry Potter movies started coming out.
Weller, played by Greg Germann, is really hard to take seriously as a villain. I mean he's just as immature and childish, if not more so, as the kids in the movie. But the Holopedia Ball from the future shows that if Weller succeeds in capturing the advanced fighter jet from the future, he would eventually destroy the entire world. And yet, I found myself entertained any time he was on screen. This is the first time I've seen Greg Germann in anything outside of a few episodes of NCIS in 2013 and I thought he played Weller pretty well.
Ed Begley Jr. is the reason I wanted to watch this movie since, as I said before, I remember him from Star Trek: Voyager and 7th Heaven in the '90s. He was wonderful as Wiz. What I thought was interesting that his role in this movie is the complete opposite of Henry Starling, the character he played on Voyager, while Germann played the more Henry Starling type character of the film. Which is interesting, since Weller's plan is fairly close to what Starling had planned in "Future's End".
The kid actors in the movie are pretty decent for the kind of movie it is. The only one I actually recognized was J.J. Totah because he played Myron on the sixth season of Glee. At first I thought the actor who plays Matt in this movie, Griffin Cleveland, was Michael Campion, who played Jackson Fuller on Fuller House, but they're completely different actors. The rest of the kid cast are completely unfamiliar to me, same with the rest of the cast in general. Though the security guard at the booth is played by Aaron Himelstein who played the kid version of Austin Powers in Austin Powers in Goldmember, who I just recently saw in "Debate 109", which is the ninth episode of the first season of Community. Which is kinda cool.
One thing that I appreciate about this movie is that the relationship between Matt and Jenny is kept very simple and appropriate for the age of the characters. Their grade isn't specified in the movie but they're in middle school, so I would put them in grade 6 or 7, with grade 8 stretching it a little bit, and their relationship at the end of the movie reflects that. Also, while it would be completely ridiculous for Matt and Jenny to still be together when they're adults, for the kind of movie it is, it is completely believable that those two would end up getting married when they become adults as Future Matt implied in his message to his younger self.
Speaking of the end of the movie, I actually thought it was a nice touch. The movie ends with Matt asking the rest of the guys if they'd like to join he and Jenny at the mall after school the next day, and the boys decline the offer as they each have something they're going to do, and then Wiz shows up in a car from the company that Weller used to run, before he got arrested for attempted world domination, asking for their help with a signal they detected from the future. That very much reminded me of the movies I used to watch when I was a kid, where the kid, or kids if there was more than one, would go off on another adventure at the end of the movie as a tease for sequels, even if those sequels didn't get made, you knew they were still out there going on adventures.
Something else that I appreciated about this movie is that the drama came from the situation the characters found themselves in, rather than the characters arguing with each other over stupid things. Too often in movies and TV shows there's drama for the sake of drama, and it's the main characters fighting with each other, because one person kept something from someone else, or whatever stupidity the writers could come up with. Here though, the drama between the characters to kept to a minimum. Even Jenny barely reacts to finding out that Holden was really Matt in disguise, using the futuristic face mask.
One thing I was confused about was what exactly Wiz's role in Weller's company was before he quit. He told the kids in one scene that he began the Pandora Project, the project Weller now headed to develop technology to time travel with, but he doesn't state if he was the project manager, or was head of that particular lab within the company or what it was. I don't know if Mark Rosman, who wrote and directed the movie, developed any of that background information, or if it's in some of the deleted scenes that might be on the DVD, but it's definitely not mentioned anywhere in the movie.
Final Thoughts and Rating: Overall Time Toys is a pretty good movie for the kind of movie it is. There's really nothing new in this movie, but it's all handled well. There's humour, action and fun in this movie and I would recommend you give it a watch if you're looking for something fun to watch during this ongoing quarantine situation we find ourselves in. It's not a great movie by any means and it's definitely not my favourite movie. But, it's a fun movie to watch and the best part is, you could show this to pretty much anyone and they won't be offended by it. I'm giving Time Toys 9.9/10 simply because it's not clear about what Wiz's role in the company that Weller is CEO of was.
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