Spoiler Alert: Unmitigated Crap

A brief synopsis of the film:

I caught this gem at 4:00 AM on the religious network. By the title, I thought the movie was going to be about a guy who punches in other people's time cards at work for them, or maybe about a guy who sets his alarm clock ahead a few minutes so he won't be late for work. As it turns out, the film is about a biblical scholar, Russell Carlisle, who travels through time from the 1890's to 2002 and changes nothing. Huh.

Carlyle's character of a Victorian era prude is played convincingly by D. David Morin, in that he has a beard and doesn't use contractions.
Those two elements really helped me willfully suspend my disbelief so that I could enjoy the riotously hilarious plot, which is as follows:

At the suggestion and doing of his colleague, Dr. Anderson (played by the indomitable Gavin McLeod), Carlisle travels from the fictional country/era of the United States of Fundamentalist Christians via a time machine so that he can see for himself the dangers of distinguishing morality as separate from the teachings of Jesus Christ. I use the word "fictional" as it applies to the majority of the audience that has graduated high school, lives above the 39th parallel, or hasn't suffered a serious head injury. If you don't fall into any of the criteria above, or you happen to be one of the screenwriters, you probably think that the United States was once a brittle, austere theocracy in which stuffy, community theater actors paraded around in monocles, scolding knickerbocker clad children with bibles tucked under their arms. But seeing as we're dealing with creative minds that believe the Earth is only about 100,000 years-old, why bother about historical accuracy?

Anyway, Dr. C steps onto a platform, is engulfed in green light, and arrives in 2002. Carlisle then gives us the perfunctory "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" routine where upon seeing water fountains, automobiles, and motion pictures he goes into a German Sheppard-like torpor, craning his head to one side and dropping his jaw a little. This, by the way, comprises about two thirds of D. David Morin's range of performance and adds to the long, long, long list of unintentional hilarities as ALL of these modern marvels existed before 1890.

Carlisle then encounters a slew of modern, profound, societal dilemmas would test anyone's Christian mettle such as: children stealing hotdogs, teenagers peacefully convening on street corners after dark, lingerie displays, well mannered laundry mat owners, and my personal favorite, movies that contain dialogue with the words "God" and "Damn" in them. In this particular scene, Carlisle goes to see a film with a church group in which the aforementioned is uttered by an actor. Dr. C. is then seen running from the theater and into the lobby, shouting hysterically at the popcorn clerks about blasphemy and pleading they should "stop this at once!!!"

In another scene, Carlisle, like many strangers met at church groups within the past 48 hours, is invited to talk to a science class in a public school by a teacher. He greets the class and then immediately begins a symposium on how God, our father, is the core off all science, and that everything written in the bible has been proven as actual, indisputable fact. After he is quickly ushered away by the teacher and told his behavior was inappropriate, Carlisle's sadness and inability to understand this cruel future are punctuated by an extreme close-up, and heart-wrenching, incidental music. I actually pulled a muscle in my upper rib cage from laughing.

The film culminates by telegraphing the Fundamentalist mantra via a tender dialogue between Carlisle and a sympathetic character who proclaims that Satan's greatest victory was removing the word of God in secular entertainment and public schools. Yes, my rib was still hurting at this point, but it wasn't over yet.

Before Carlisle returns to his time and fictional national, he revisits Eddie Martinez, the well mannered, patient, and helpful laundry mat owner played by Z list actor and comedian Paul Rodriguez. In a most frank, earnest, and unwittingly hilarious moment, Carlisle tells Eddie that no matter how good a person he is in this lifetime, he will burn in hell lest he give credit to Jesus Christ for the source of his morality. In fact, there is no difference between his productive and generally moral life than that of a child rapist or a murderer, that is, in the eyes of God at least. Eddie then promises to read the bible. Wouldn't you?

Carlisle then returns home to a decade devoid of D.H. Lawrence, violent racism, and pubic lice and tells Dr. Anderson what he has observed in his "experiment." He tells him that not giving proper MLA documentation to Jesus in the "works cited" page we call "life" will lead the country down a path to destruction as proved by the proclivity of hot dog theft and science unfettered by creationism. Yes, the petty and vindictive God will send even good people straight to an eternity of burning pain, because he desires credit for the work more than he does the results of "goodness."

Strangely, Carlisle leaves out that life expectancy has doubled, indoor plumbing is common, and Jim Crowe has been outlawed when reporting back to Dr. Anderson. Huh.

Dr. Anderson then wonders how long mankind has before Jesus destroys the world in a ball of fire that will consume all non-believers, or: the ultimate, orgasmic-like fantasy of all religious zealots.

Anyway, please watch this turd, if for nothing more than a good laugh, than for the salvation of your very real soul, one that sees intolerance, censorship, and torture fantasy for what it is: About one more gay-bashing away from flying airplanes into buildings.