Review of The Philadelphia Experiment

23 January 2011. This would be a very good sci fi thriller, if not for the overly melodramatic and inappropriate, inconsistent use of aggressive military action in this rather fascinating time travel movie. For its time, the special effects were creative and in most cases not imitative. There are portions of the movie with the military chatter that were seemingly authentic, giving more compelling appeal to the background images and sounds to this movie. For the most part, the movie was directly with serious intent, even though the dialogue at times felt pretty much standard and at times almost stale, but the acting lifted the dialogue out of the mire. Unlike THE FINAL COUNTDOWN (1980), the lack of high-caliber actors may have been the plus for THE PHILADELPHIA EXPERIMENT, allowing the audience to focus more on the story, characters than the actors themselves. The biggest problem and a significant one was the insistence of the huge military action fireworks even as they were instructed to just bring the main character in, not to shoot at him as if to kill him. Overall, this was a decent sci fi movie on a relatively low budget that did well for the most part.