Space 1999! The one that's NOT a ripoff of Groundhog Day

 

Title: 12:01

What Year?: 1993

Classification: Runnerup/ Mashup

Rating: Downright Decent! (4/5)

 

In earlier reviews for this feature, I have commented that the 1970s were the inarguable golden age of TV movies, as evidenced by Duel and Trapped. With this review, we’re jumping forward to their last hurrah, the early to mid-1990s. At this stage, network TV movies remained inarguably a “thing”, with some of the very best examples still coming out. However, the networks were no longer in a position to challenge Hollywood, nor hold off further challenges from cable television and direct-to-video releases (see Deep Space). With the present entry, we will be looking at the arguable last hurrah, a TV movie that brought in Hollywood talent and production values. In the process, it also entangled itself with a major theatrical movie, without anyone ever quite sorting out their actual relationship to each other.

Our story begins with a guy named Barry living a mundane life in a demeaning office job. Things continue to go downhill when he crashes and burns with his office crush and then witnesses her murder. When he wakes up, however, the lady is alive and well, and nobody remembers anything amiss. He soon realizes that he is reliving the same day, as the same events continue to repeat. After a few repeats, he begins to learn that his employers are working on a project to develop a new source of energy based on time itself, which a critical expert warns could create a “time bounce”. He also continues to try to do better with the lady, who turns out to be a scientist on the project and a whistleblower who suspects one of her two bosses of unauthorized use of their prototype machine. The loop finally breaks when he saves her, but the day will soon start over again, and they still don’t know who has triggered the time bounce. Can any amount of tries stop what already happened?

12:01 was a feature-length production made by New Line Cinema and originally aired by Fox. The feature was based on a 1973 story “12:01 PM” by Richard Lupoff (d. 2020), and also an expansion of a 1990 short film based on the same story starring Kurtwood Smith, fresh out of his type-breaking turn as Clarence Bodicker in Robocop. The full-length treatment took a much more upbeat tone than the short story or the earlier film; the original story notably features an attempt by the main character to stop the time loop, but does not resolve if he succeeds or has any chance of doing so. The feature starred Jonathan Silverman as Barry and Helen Slater of Supergirl as the romantic interest Lisa, with veteran Martin Landau as the enigmatic inventor Thadius Moxley. The movie aired in July 1993, five months after the very similar Groundhog Day, making it at face value a “runnerup” to the theatrical film. Lupoff directly accused the creators of that film of plagiarism, while the latter appear to have made no statement. Unusually, 12:01 received an MPAA rating, of PG-13. It was released on VHS and later on DVD, but has been “out of print” and costly to obtain in recent years.

For my experiences, I distinctly remember hearing of this film when it aired, and was immediately interested. However, I didn’t see it until a good while after when it aired again, possibly 2000 or even later. (I think I might have recorded it, and dammit, I have no idea where the tape could be.) I managed to watch it at least once or twice more through Netflix, most recently around 2016, before it finally disappeared from their disc catalog. Ironically, it took much longer to get hold of the original story, which is easily among the bleakest I have encountered, then a few years later took a look at the short film, which if anything is actually darker. Once I started doing reviews for this blog, I thought of reviewing this film on and off, but in usual form, I put it off. When I decided to open up to TV movies, I had this one lined up even earlier than the others. Still, I got to it a little later than normal, courtesy of a “bootleg” online video. In further keeping with experience, I quickly found a lot more issues than I would have expected from a film I had viewed not too long ago.

The first thing to be said about this movie is that it is genuinely charming and reasonably funny, and that in itself might be too much for anyone coming to it as a fan of Lupoff’s story. However, this is one case where the liberties taken are all but necessary. The scenario worked for a short story, and remained sustainable as a short film, but taking it to feature length without introducing some hope of resolution would have been as grueling and tedious for the audience as it was for the main character. In a striking further revision, the time loop is drawn out from one hour to a full day. On this point, the easily distracting similarities with Groundhog Day (which I have actively declined to watch) start to look more like convergent evolution than plagiarism in either direction. The further parallel choice to focus on comedy is greatly helped by the casting of Silverman, best known for roles like Weekend At Bernie’s, and perhaps more so by Slater, who on top of her obvious charms is convincing enough as a “brainy” type to fill in a lot of the scientific rationale herself. Extra credit is in order for Jeremy Piven and Robin Bartlett, who fill out the office-satire element as Barry’s buddy and his harassing manager respectively.

On the downside, this is a movie that simply feels like “too much and not enough”. This shows most blatantly with the action sequences, which outside of a chase scene when Barry first rescues Lisa feel as self-restrained as a kiddie ride. Matters aren’t helped by the music, which often feels like it’s either trying too hard or has already given up and descended into self parody. Then things really go awry with the romance arc, exactly where far higher profile productions than this routinely end up in solid “cringe” territory. Factoring in the usual unintentional horror of ‘80s-‘90s “romances” (if anything exacerbated in the latter decade), this one is at least self-aware. Barry starts generally likable, and when he does something that could be considered “creepy”, he usually learns enough not to do it again. It can also be allowed somewhat generously that there is a measure of chemistry with Lisa/ Slater, aided by the fact that her character is established to be aware of the possibility of a time loop. All in all, it would work perfectly well if it all built up to the pair going out on a date. But the storyline keeps pushing that they must get “together” in the space of a day, and eventually relies on the fact that Lisa must rely on what Barry tells her about their previous encounters. (This was all a further reminder of what I have been making fun of with the Sidekick Carl adventure.) It crosses my mind that this might have been mitigated if she started to “remember” the preceding days herself, except that would probably have been beaten into one more “love conquers time” cliché.

Now for the “one scene”, I’m going with the first and most clever iteration of the time loop. Before realizing that the day is being repeated, Barry has called the police before Lisa’s murder actually happened. Rather than preventing her death, he ends up in jail as a suspect. He ends up in a cell with another prisoner doing exercises, who will make you think, “That guy looks like Danny Trejo,” and then forget about it until you find out it’s Danny Trejo. There’s a tense buildup as midnight approaches. Barry predicts that the day is about to repeat, to which the other inmate responds that the days are all the same. Then he muses that the time loop might not repeat, and calls out, “I want another chance!” Trejo answers more irritably, “No more chances, you’re doing time now!” The camera focuses on the clock, which distorts and blurs as time reverses, and the next shot finds Barry back in his own bed.

In closing, the best thing I can say is that 12:01 is a movie that feels like the “last” of its kind even if you know full well that it really isn’t. There would be plenty more TV movies through the coming decade, some of them at least as good. (Back when I first tried my hand at this, I did a review of the Ted Danson Gulliver’s Travels that might still out there somewhere in the ether.) Yet, none of them would be the same, especially in terms of challenging the big-budget Hollywood system. Under further scrutiny, it shows that even at its relatively early date, network productions were selling out to TV conventions, to the point that I docked it a full rating compared to what I expected going in. What remains impressive is that enough of the premise and further execution got through, and above all that it continues to challenge you to think. Once again, not bad for a movie of the week.