"12:01" is bascially a bad ripoff of "Groundhog Day". It's kind of interesting that the makers of "12:01" thought the whole "day repeating thing" was a "fresh" idea and decided to do their own damn version. But this version, while I like it, is very annoying.
Jonathan Silverman is Barry, a typical guy who works in personell of some science place. He's constantly getting threatened to be fired and has to deal with stupid pranks done by his friend Howard (Jeremy Piven). Barry is in love with this scienitist chick named Lisa (Helen Slater) but can never find the right thing to say to her. Later that day, he and Howard watch her get gunned down in front of work. After drinking his sorrows away, he goes home and gets electrocuted.
Right at 12:01 AM.
When he wakes up he finds that it's the same day he just had and he goes through the whole thing again, but totally confused. He gets yelled at for the same crap, he falls for the same pranks, and Lisa is alive.
So what's going on? Well the science place Barry works at is working on some accelerator thingy where if misused can cause what this movie calls "A time bounce" which means the days will repeat. Barry figures this out so now he has to convince everyone around him that it's happening to him and that Lisa will get murdered.
When Lisa is murdered again, Barry's arrested cause he kept telling everyone about it. But no matter, at 12:01 he goes back to repeat the day again. This time he sneaks around, trying to stop the time bounce from happening and save Lisa. He uncovers a bunch of crazy shit going on between the lead scientist Dr. Huxley (Martin Landu) and Lisa.
Barry is finally able to convice Lisa that he is repeating the day and that she will get shot. He saves her and a cool car chase ensues, cause a day repeating movies NEEDS a car chase. They find saftey at Barry's parents cabin where they proceed to get it on. Before 12:01 hits, he finds out as much as he can about Lisa and suddenly we're back.
Barry keeps on convincing Lisa, even getting killed a couple of times in the process (does any of this sound like maybe they were watching "Groundhog Day" a BIT too much?), and they discover that Dr. Huxley is running the time thingy illegally cause the government wants it shut down.
Finally, Barry and Lisa goes to the science lab and tries to stop Huxley and the machine. Right at 12:01 instead of the time beam going out to the world, it hits Huxley and he blows up, causing the time bounce to stop. Everyone's happy! Yay!!
So here's what annoying about this movie (besides being a blatant rip off). You know how a lot of people like to nitpick stuff that happens in movies, like a character would sneak into an office to get information and get away scott free, so your typical watcher is like "Oh he couldn't do that without getting caught". Well in this movie, Barry gets caught REPEATEDLY!
He sneaks into an office, he's caught.
He hacks into a computer and is caught.
He breaks into places he's not suppose to be and is caught and fired.
And at the end, when Huxley explodes, cops show up cause Barry and Lisa basically broke into the place. So the cops show up and Barry and Lisa is like "Dr. Huxley ran the machine illegally! We had to stop him! He was gonna kill us!!" Instead of the usual "Oh ok. Glad you're ok" and the police move on, our two lead characters, THE HEROES mind you, GET ARRESTED! It's the final shot!! How many movies has the balls to have their final scene with the heroes being put in handcuffs for breaking and entering and blowing up a man? NONE!!!
So pretty much if you're one of those annoying nitpickers (I'm sorta guilty of this but I'm able to let a movie be a movie) this should be your favorite movie ever! And yes, Bill Murray and Harold Ramis (Director of Groundhog Day) did it way better with funnier results, no argument there. But I like this movie. It's not very well known (I don't think) and if I recall correctly, it was made-for-TV. At least that's where I saw it back in 1993, a good few months after "Groundhog Day" hit theaters. Despite all the annoying problems and being a rip off, "12:01" is my ninth guilty pleasure.
Guilty Pleasure Reviewed Already (This Time On The Blog):
THE WOLFMAN'S GOT NARDS!!!
Slayton over at PUXZKKX wrote out his ten guilty pleasures. He even included one of mine!
Well tomorrow's the last day to send in your list or link. See how easy it is? And fun? You like easy and fun? Right?
-Jason
2 comments:
Ah, yes... I've seen this one. Ironically, I think I watched it starting at around midnight one night. Anyway, I couldn't remember if I had liked it or not... until you mentioned the ending. Then I remembered.
Yeah... it was enjoyable in the "This is a pretty bad rip-off" kind of way up until that ending. I remember being quite upset about it ending like that. But oh well...
We should rewrite Iron Man so when Tony announces he's Iron Man, he's arrrested and sent to prison for destroying public property and violating US Air Space laws.
-Jason
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