Millennium haunted by ghosts of Al Waxman, Maury Chaykin

By Katherine Monk

The tax shelter era in Canadian cinema ended in the early 1980s, when the federal government decided to remove tax incentives designed to spur private investment in Canadian production. But you can feel the sweaty lip of a funding whore’s bad habit all the way through Millennium, a totally forgotten chunk of sci-fi fromage that dates back to 1989 and features Cheryl Ladd and Kris Kristofferson in the starring roles.

Millennium – This Blu-ray release includes a double feature and extras.

At first, you’d never suspect Canada had any part in the creation of this airline thriller with a futuristic twist, but then you see the beloved Maury Chaykin and the fallen King of Kensington, Al Waxman, walk across the frame. And Toronto’s City Hall chambers used as a lecture hall. And suddenly, Millennium is more than just a piece of airplane movie camp. It’s a wiggling piece cinema history that points to the place we stand right now: a nation awash in co-productions with big non-Canadian stars.

The Canadian angle is probably the most interesting thing about Millennium, because the script is just plain laughable… Or is it: The human race has polluted planet Earth to the point where human beings can no longer reproduce, forcing humans of the future to create a time machine that allows them to steal 20th century samples of the species to start new colonies. The best way to do this is to take aircraft destined to crash out of the sky via the time machine, steal the people, replace the bodies with lookalike corpses, and send the plane back to the past as fiery wreckage.

Sure, it sounds ludicrous. Then again, we’re still looking for MH370.

So strap yourselves in for a conspiracy theorist’s dream come true as Kristofferson plays a Transportation Safety Board investigator looking into the crash of a commercial airliner. Cheryl Ladd, sporting an angular hairdo, plays a being from the future assigned to stop his progress—lest he solve the riddle of the crash, and realize the plane and its passengers were beamed into a different time period.

Kristofferson plays it completely straight and because he does, he makes the movie watchable because he doesn’t really get it either. When Louise Baltimore (Ladd) starts talking about life and love after their hotel sex scene, Kristofferson says: “First rule is don’t go to bed with anyone crazier than you—and I don’t know if you’re crazy, but you’re right there in the top ten of my weird list, lady.”

“Give me a little longer, and I’d make it to the top,” she replies.

It’s probably the best exchange in the movie because it brings a whiff of humanity to the whole crazy and largely mechanical affair that crash lands in cliché after mere seconds of airborne drama.

In this dusty rose time capsule laced with pastels and permed hair, corduroy blazers and exaggerated shoulder pads, you can still feel a desire to do more than bedazzle the viewer with special effects. Jon Varley’s script (based on his story “Air Raid”) and the direction of Michael Anderson (Logan’s Run, The Sword of Gideon, Orca) are still operating according to old-school rules that put character ahead of spectacle, merchandizing, and potential theme park revenues.

So even when this movie spirals into silliness, no one lets go of the emotional controls. Ladd and Kristofferson play it straight to the very end, as does Daniel J. Travanti – who plays a scientist who suspects the truth, and utters this dire warning to future generations: “We are the ones… leaving a legacy of acid rain and pollution that is destroying the planet, and making the human species barren… doomed to extinction.”

Back then, it all felt like matinee science fiction, but like a lot of artifacts spawned on the fringe, Millennium’s crazy ideas don’t seem to crazy anymore – even if the movie itself is hilariously dated, the dialogue is clunky and the performances too nuanced to make it absolute camp.

For fans of Canadian cinema, Millennium is a time machine that allows you to travel back to a simpler time and place, where Al Waxman and Maury Chaykin were ominpresent, and iPhone footage of skirmishes with the mayor at Toronto City Hall would have been considered science fiction.

Millennium is available now on Blu-ray as a double feature with R.O.T.O.R. via Scream Factory! Special features include trailer and an alternate ending for Millennium. For more information, visit Shout Factory!  For more Katherine Monk reviews, click here, or visit RottenTomatoes.com.

@katherinemonk

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