Total Reality.

Are you guys ready for more David Bradley? To be honest, I'm not really, not after Cyborg Cop was so incredibly boring. Please be better, Total Reality!

Okay this movie has no Wikipedia page...so it means I can't pretend to have researched up on it first. Wow, you know the movie has to suck when it has no Wiki page. Even Cyborg Cop had a Wiki page. Damn. This film came out in 1997, the year where David Bradley's IMDb page suddenly stops. The only reviews I can find on this are people writing blogs like me and most of them said this film was pretty terrible and not in a good way. About the only funfacts I learnt from the IMDb page is this film is apparently full of shots that shouldn't be in the final production...but are. Oh well, sorry I couldn't give you more on the film before we started but any way, let's dig in!

Set 'two hundred years in the future', although this came out in 1997, so is it 185 years in the future now? Well either way, Earth has been taken over by a Military Political Party known as 'Bridgists' and they've basically eliminated freedom or something with some doodad, pretty typical Sci-Fi shit. There was a rebellion and all life on Earth was wiped out in the war. Despite this...it takes twenty years for the war to end? Whaaat? How can the Bridgists be closing in on the rebels if '30 Billion People' have died (although the film later says million, not billion so whatever), you just said no one is left! I mean it is implied that humanity has colonised on other planets and space stations, but this is never specifically stated. It would also be nice to see some of this, but oh well we get told this info dump both by voice over and text on screen! Basically the main plot is about four former soldiers, who are currently looking at death sentences, they are given the chance for a full pardon and a return to active duty if they go backwards in time to take out two war criminals and find out why, of all years, they picked 1998 to get back too. It is also a race against time as they've been fitted with a doodad which will kill them if they don't return within forty hours. Over in 1998, two agents called Smith and Wesson (a gag the movie will not shut up about) also become wrapped up in it all, to give some real world grounding to the thing...well as close as possible with their gag names. As it turns out 1998 is the start of the Bridgist movement, taking down John Bridges can save the future. There are also some more doodad things, but both the real world angle and much of the plot that starts to show up in the second act doesn't really go anywhere all leading to a very satisfying, not exactly Hollywood, ending.

Writing-wise, the film leaves me really conflicted and torn, for every piece of Sci-Fi jargon, for every unnecessary cliché, for every moment that is confusing or messy there is an interesting idea or interesting characters. Total Reality has a surprisingly compelling mystery. Although far from original, our four central badasses are well...exactly that, badass (well more like three of them, you'll see what I mean if you watch it) and sending these four crazy motherfuckers backwards in time to hunt down a war criminal is a great plot for a B-Movie. Plus there are elements which are really well handled like the fact that the gang genuinely feel out of time when they got back to 1998 for some genuinely amusing results. And things like that make me feel really bad, you can find something to like in every film, but when things are genuinely decent in an otherwise terrible movie, it feels a shame most people will never see it. Although who the fuck are the Bridgists and who the fuck are rebels?

Hey, you know how I hate CGI? Well I never knew there was an even greater hell waiting for me...1997 CGI. This has easily the worst special effects in any film I have ever seen in my entire life. I've seen webseries that look more expensive than this. Although to be fair, CGI hasn't come that far in fifteen years, a lot less than I realised. CGI just sucks, okay. And it isn't just the CGI, the props...the sets, the continuity errors, this movie looks terrible and not in a fun way. Even David Bradley looks really old and tired in this movie, and I'm not sure it's intentional. Everything just looks like shit. The thing looks like a Sega CD game, only not squashed to the middle of the screen and we never have to press any buttons, except maybe stop and eject because you can't take how shitty it is.

I never thought I'd say it, but the film looks hell of a lot better when it's set in 1998 because there is less of that PS1 cutscene CGI and Power Ranger's gun fights - I mean everything seems to get better once they go backwards in time, the writing, the acting, the sets and props. I mean don't get me wrong, it is still pretty shitty, but the film becomes a lot more practical in its production and that really is in the films favour.

You see the movie is shitty, but I think the first word I'd actually go for is wooden. There is just this odd stiffness to everything, everyone seems to react way too slowly to things and when they do react it's so stilted and lifeless. It makes all the action scenes feel really awkward and clunky and the more emotional moments completely flat. Either no one was trying or this thing is severely under edited...or both. Like there are these huge set piece moments that are played so oddly casual like the film itself doesn't give a shit.

That being said, the cast have a surprising amount of chemistry and the dialogue is surprisingly well written, characters react pretty naturally to a lot of things (albeit oddly slowly) and the film isn't afraid of making fun of itself. B-Movies that are self aware of the fact often come out stronger than B-Movies who try and play everything straight.

So do I recommend it? For all intents and purposes, I should hate this movie but I just don't. And I guess it says a lot that I don't know why I don't hate it either. In the end, I actually quite enjoyed Total Reality. I went into the film seeing it had a 4.6 on IMDb and with user reviews telling everyone to listen to the bad reviews. And yet...there is just something so oddly compelling about the whole thing, I mean it's bad, really bad and really unoriginal but I still found myself laughing with it, rather than at it. I don't know why...I just digged it. I know I've hated similar films for less but there was just something really likeable about this film and for £1.26 on Amazon, it is a steal.

Think About It!

-Locke