Time Masters (1982)

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Time Masters Movie Review

Time Masters is a 1982 French animated science fiction film directed by Rene Laloux. It is a very flawed, yet very original and intriguing film.

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“The creature denies happiness!“

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It follows a boy Piel who is stranded on a desert planet and awaits rescue by his friends who guide him through voice. Without spoiling anything, let’s just say that there is a lot more to this plot and that it ends with a giant twist that was actually pretty clever and even fascinating. I loved its adventurous tone and its ecological approach was great. In terms of the themes, it is definitely lacking, but in terms of originality and charm, it most certainly succeeded in spades.

What is the best asset that Time Masters possesses has to be its animation which is absolutely astonishing. I simply adored watching this movie. This entire planet called Perdide is wonderful to behold and the world building is something that this director always manages to convene perfectly. The whole planet is filled with these weird branching trees with very interesting fruits to them. But some of the creatures that we meet are also interesting with the winged men and their myth being so fascinating and the animals are mostly really cute. The entire animation looks polished and although the character designs were far from amazing or original, the visuals were awesome and detailed in a typical French fashion. And some of the water scenery and buildings here were wallpaper-worthy.

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Rene Laloux also made ‘Fantastic Planet’ and ‘Gandahar’ and both of those movies are great and much better than Time Masters owing to a variety of reasons. One of them is the sophistication which is something that those movies had in abundance, but this one doesn’t. Another thing is the overall entertainment value which isn’t great as the film is sometimes slow and definitely a bit meandering in structure and editing.

But the biggest problem has to be its humor. The film is a superb French science fiction film overall, but because it is mostly serious and the director’s other movies are serious throughout, this one is uneven as it adds humor to the table which is totally unnecessary and not done properly. Those animals seemed to have come out of a Star Wars movie as they were too cute and too pointless for this particular film which is otherwise mature. That was so disappointing, but at least they took only a smaller amount of running time.

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But the overall look to the movie is terrific and this world is beautifully imagined and also very much authentic and one of a kind. I admired its mythology and a definite attention to detail along with an intriguing first act and superb third act with only the second one being troublesome. The voice acting is fine and the characters aren’t great, but they aren’t bad either and are very much serviceable for this kind of film and some are quite likable as well. In the end, Time Masters isn’t the best that Rene Laloux has to offer, but it’s most certainly an original and mostly satisfying science fiction excursion.