The Philadelphia Experiment

This was a very disappointing movie. I give it two starts for introducing a completely different storyline from the first movie, but it isn't much of a story, its more of a one-liner. The concept of a time traveling ship has so many possibilities and many of these were used with great success in the original movie. It had a bit of science, not much but enough to make you wonder. It had humor, warmth and characters you cared about. This movie doesn't have any of this. The new movie just takes the ship and uses it as a prop. The cinematography also blows, very few shots are of movie-quality, this movie is basically an extended TV-series episode. Do not watch this movie if you have a brain. -Spoiler alert: The core of the movie is a science experiment gone wrong, to fix it the "bad guys" will solve it by shooting/bombing it. There's a ton of shooting and bombing in this movie and the "bad guys" are lead by an over zealous hot chick hell bent on some kind of death rage on the involved characters. Thats all she is. One dimensional.

A group of scientists trying to create a cloaking device accidentally conjure up the USS Eldridge, a ship that disappeared in 1943. Now their only priority is to send it back. While I did not see the 1980s version of this story, I am familiar with what allegedly happened in real life. I think this is a fine plot of what could have happened, even if it does not necessarily make logical sense. Director Paul Ziller is SyFy's go-to guy and has made quite a few of their productions now, with varying degrees of success. I feel like Ziller really has a handle on how to make a low-budget science fiction film, as he has the formula down. The weakest part is always the special effects (the computer-generated effects), which are out of his control. Of course, this film also suffers from having Emilie Ullerup, one of the worst actresses in the history of the universe. Her character is a bit hard to believe (a world-class hacker working as a waitress in a small town diner), but even if we accept that, Ullerup just kept overacting repeatedly. I felt no sympathy for her and think the film would have been much better if her scenes were just cut out completely. And why did the police officer wear jeans?

Decent remake of the 1984 film mainly just takes the basic plot and takes it into a new direction so those who loved the original movie and its love story can rest easy. In this version, a government agency is doing work on the original Philadelphia Experiment when something goes wrong and the ship Eldridge ends up floating around in time. The sole survivor (Nicholas Lea) ends up getting off the ship in 2012 and teams up with his granddaughter (Emilie Ullerup) to try and find out what's going on and how to stop it. I actually thought that the first hour of this film was better than anything in the original movie but sadly the final thirty-minutes start to go overboard but in the end we're still left with a fairly impressive movie and especially considering it aired on SyFy. What I enjoyed most about the first half is simply the confusion of the Bill Gardner character as he tries to figure out what went wrong in the 1943 experiment and how it has gotten him placed in 2012. I thought the early scenes between him and his granddaughter were quite entertaining and I thought the action scenes that followed with the two were well directed. The problem happens when the super secret government people start to show up with murder in their eyes and this is when the first loses its brain and fall off track. I'd say the superhuman powers that Gardner receives is also something that didn't work too well. I thought both Lea and Ullerup were extremely good in their roles and their performances made the film all the more enjoyable. Malcolm McDowell has a quite cameo but is a lot of fun and the original star Michael Pare is also on hand here so that should thrill fans of the 1984 film. I had just watched the original film days before this one and I said that the material was so strong that it really needed a bigger budget to fully capture everything it could. That didn't really happen with this movie as there's still something better that could come from the material but this here is still worth

Had I known that this movie was from SyFy, I would've left this one on the shelf. SyFy is developing a rather disconcerting tendency to use absolutely horrid animation. Additionally, the low budget of the films they produce preclude the use of any type of technical advisors. Using Army rank insignia on a supposedly Naval uniform is a big NO NO! And his "wash khakis" look as if they came off the shelf at K-mart. USS Eldridge should not be plastered all over the ship, nor the hull number. And when Eldridge fell from the sky onto the building, the resulting impact would've broken her back. This one is going directly to the pawn shop so I may recoup some of the money I spent on this abomination.

I want to give props to Nicholas Lea, the man can act, and he can really sell the role he's playing...even if he is in an absolutely horrible movie. So, big hats off to him for bringing his A-Game to this. He made the movie tolerable and I was actually able to finish it because of him. However, well, the special effects showed too much. Had they hid it in the darkness more they could have saved money, made it look better, and it wouldn't have come across so much like a early 90s made for TV flick. And it felt that good chunks of the script were written around the special effects and...that didn't help at all. So the end result was a bad remake of a decent film (one that was clearly low budget and still managed to pull it off by NOT featuring a ton of FXs, with a horrible script... ...but a horrible script that had a fun cameo by Michael Pare for people like me...and a horrible script that Nicholas Lea still managed to sell despite having some of the dumbest and most misplaced lines imaginable.

This was surprisingly a very good quality movie for SyFi which has a history of pure crap. The Storyline was decent, the acting very good and the directing excellent as it was non-stop action. What I liked the best was that the Eldridge Carrier Ship suddenly appears in the most bizarre of places like on a Skyscraper in Chicago amongst other places. The 2012 Philadelphia Experiment is not a straight retelling of the original Philadelphia Experiment movie but uses some of the "facts" of the Philadelphia Experiment as a basis for this movie. A few things don't quite make sense like how Malcolm Mcdowell is a spry active 100? year old but there are no major plot holes and this was an enjoyable movie to watch on TV. Too bad they couldn't figure a way to make this a TV series.

This 2012 version of THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT is a failed reworking of the minor sci-fi classic that was the original. Gone is the military-focused, ship-bound storyline to be replaced by a generic 'government conspiracy' style tale, with lots of driving around and chatting as a couple of protagonists evade the generic bad guys. The special effects are very limited and consist merely of a couple of 'electricity' effects which they really shouldn't have bothered with, as they're not very good. The hero duties are fulfilled by Nicholas Lea, who certain cult fans may remember playing Krychek in THE X-FILES, while the likes of Michael Pare and Malcolm McDowell prop up the cast. However, like a lot of low budget Canadian sci-fi movies in recent years, it's really not worth bothering with.

The Philadelphia Experiment Reactivated is a very entertaining and good movie with a plausible connection to the original movie about the Philadelphia Experiment (1984). However, the reintroduction of Michael Paré as a different character than David Herdeg, screws things somewhat up. He didn't change that much. That fact aside, it is fair to say that the film has a decent story, a good plot, but what pulls a little bit down is the poor choice of actors for some of the roles. On the other side the film has its dosage of scare-propaganda towards the positive effects of Nikolae Tesla's inventions. It seems that some people (yes, I know this seems like conspiracy theory) are really scared of Tesla's inventions coming into everyday use by common man. Anyway it is reasonable and good entertainment.

Deaf, dumb and blind! Americans think they can just crouch over their viewers and send their kids to the pool while spending what seems to be a small fortune. There is nothing original about this film. There is nothing tangible about this film. The actors leave everything to be desired. The story is so loose that what ever you could imagine happens next would be better than what actually happens next. This film is pure proof of making films to provide jobs for actors and actress plus crew that don't really deserve to be in the business. They have no shame in handing you the viewer a great big pile of steaming cow pat and calling it entertainment. I yearn for any decent scifi, it used to exist and now it somehow just doesn't, I feel completely deflated and let down, so many chances and yet so many complete belly flops.

Take one of the better science fiction films of the the past, add an even more intelligent script, superb direction, and excellent production values and you have this stunning remake of the 1984 Philadelphia Experiment. The cast includes some of the best actors of our time doing work that is nothing less than breathtaking. The combination of star power, great special effects, fabulous twists on the original plot, and the backing of Syfy results in a sure-fire hit that should receive a much higher rating than it does here. Fans of the original will welcome this production and the inclusion of familiar faces from the 1984 classic. This is science fiction as it is meant to be: smart, well produced, and with a cast that is undeniably one of the finest assembled for any film project.