How sad is this?

As Good As It Gets

Funny, strange, confrontational and subversive, this is one of the most interesting experiences you'll have at the cinema this year.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I'm giving this one a "3" mainly for its curiosity value. Have you ever treated yourself to a really bad movie? A movie that has no plot, for instance? Well, this one goes a bit further than that. It introduces and then ditches so many plots that I stopped counting after seven. Part of the problem undoubtedly is that the producer obviously ran out of money. He did spend up big on special effects and that presumably wiped out the budget. No money for a script-writer, so he was forced to improvise. He doubtless hoped that patrons would go so ga-ga over his library of special effects that no-one would notice that the plot he and/or some lackey made up on the spot, made no sense. Maybe he took suggestions from the players? Maybe he wrote up some scenes with his kids at home? Maybe he asked the watchman at the studio gates? Or more likely, the special effects people? The movie is crowded with special effects, that's for sure. Most of them - indeed probably all of them - make no sense, of course, but who's going to notice? The audience? What audience? The title is all wrong for a starter. What day? What time? What end? It should have been titled: "The Day They Tried To Make a Classy "A" Movie On a "B" budget".

Somewhere out in the middle of nowhere aliens are descending on a particular farm house in the desert. An exploding star , or electromagnetic storm or something like that has just happened, and all sorts of strange lights appear across the sky,, one family in particular has to deal with it all, a little girl somehow holds the key to all this,, a small pyramid shaped object that was left behind by the aliens, and she keeps it in her pocket,, the storm, or exploded star causes lights to turn on and off by themselves,, toilets to flush, so on and so forth,, I personally liked the first half of the movie more than the second half,, but altogether it wasn't that bad,, I would personally go middle of the road on this one.

According to the opening credits for "The Day Time Ended", four writers are credited with developing the story and writing the screenplay. And none of them apparently were able to make the movie's story make much sense. I'm not sure even if you can call what's in the movie a story - much of the movie seems to be just a series of random supernatural events, and even the resolution at the end doesn't answer what the intents of the creators of the events are. Though the problems of the movie go beyond the bad script. Director John 'Bud' Cardos makes much of this theatrical movie have the feel of a made-for-TV movie of this period. Is there anything positive to say about this movie? Well, some of the special effects aren't bad for a movie that had a pittance of a budget. But I'd rather have a good script with bad special effects than a movie with good special effects and a bad script.

I saw this when it was in the theater, it started out so strong I mean back in 1980 this was a bold movie and the special effects were excellent AT THE time. Now you would have to of been at least 30 or so in 1980 to really understand this point because studying film historically misses the mind set at the time the expectations, and other related psychological factors. Now as I said the movie was engaging suspenseful and very entertaining. It builds to an excellent climax then.... IT ends I mean the person that described it as having a water balloon break in your hand before throwing it, besides being a very poetic description. In my experience, it was just not strong enough. My wife and I were well... how can I say this? We were upset, I mean we paid money, invested the time to watch the movie which was excellent. "We both felt we were robbed with an ending that convinced us both the production company must of run out of money and could not raise enough to finish it correctly. In fact my wife said it best, it did not end, IT JUST STOPPED!