“You and your warlords have already taken over one dimension. You eliminated half the people. You forced the rest into slavery.”

Justin’s rating: There’s no CGI quite like low budget mid-90s CGI!

Justin’s review: I love that Rutger Hauer went all-in on scifi B-movies in the ’90s. He brought a certain level of grizzled intensity to many of these odd premises, including Wedlock, Split Second, and The Blood of Heroes. Today, I’m glad to add another of his projects to my watchlist with the intriguingly named Crossworlds.

Joe (Sports Night’s Josh Charles) isn’t exactly on top of his game in college, but at least he’s got a trans-dimensional key that — unwitting to him — opens a doorway to another world. That may sound cool and all, but it’s going to cause him no end of grief, because this other dimension is full of warlords who want to bring their army over to earth and experience the fun of charging into machine gun emplacements with clubs.

The pendant also makes Joe a prime target for Mystics, people who have the ability to jump between the dimensions without any keys or doors. He’d be toast if it wasn’t for Laura (Andrea Roth), a traveler from the Short Skirt Dimension, and her good friend AT (Hauer), who’s being forced into a mentor role with all of the reluctance of a toddler told to eat his peas.

Everyone wants to combine Joe’s crystal and an ancient scepter to make the ultimate key, including the bad guys. They end up butting heads with a bad telepath named Ferris (Stuart Wilson) who’s definitely not on his day off. Ferris has a wide array of “whatever suits the moment” powers, including forcing people tell the truth (useful!), animating suits of armor to smash up a whole lot of glass cases at a museum (less useful!), and stretching like Mr. Fantastic (weird!).

The general concept is good, Josh Charles is one of my favorite guy actors from the ’90s, and Rutger Hauer is lending some star power here. Yet I have a hard time signing off on this with the patented Justin Seal of Approval (which is 10% better than Nintendo’s), mostly because there isn’t enough of a budget to pull off multiple worlds and a huge showdown between rebel and warlord forces. In fact, there’s barely any time spent in the alternate world but rather a hop around ours as Joe expresses increasing frustration about the ludicrous situation.

I was pretty amused how little anyone wants to explain the rules of all of this dimensional travel and conflict to Joe — AT in particular tells him to shut up and stop asking questions several times. I eat up these kinds of “naive dude gets dragged into some weird fantasy world” thing as much as the next Harry Potter fan, but c’mon, sooner or later you’ve got to lay out the rules and start making sense. Keeping us in the dark goes from captivating to frustrating real quick.

All in all, Crossworlds feels like an extended pilot episode for a TV series that was never picked up. Too much of this is a messy pile of ideas swirling about a very lackluster chase to get the Big Stick or keep the Big Stick away from the guys coming for it. There are curiosities worth picking out here, but as an overall package, it’s not what I’d hope to find when stepping through this particular cinematic doorway.

Intermission!

• There are several internet sources that claim that Crossworlds was one of the inspirations for 1999’s The Matrix, but take rumors as you will.
• Stuart Wilson wears a Crossworlds baseball cap in 1999’s Second Sight.
• Hey, you get the choice between either listening to or reading the opening text scrawl!
• Is that freakin’ JACK BLACK as a crazy college kid? I think it is!
• “Make the move! MAKE THE MOVE!”
• Girls love the “I’m conducting a survey during a party” come on line
• The hollow dagger is pretty cool
• “You sure don’t look like your dad.” “I care.”
• Beware the birds
• Beware the surfers? Nah.
• “It’s a cosmic chainsaw. It cuts holes in our reality.”
• Don’t puke in the red corridor or you’ll puke your guts out
• Joe’s go-to move in a lot of fights is “crawling around the bad guys’ feet”
• “What the hell happened to Thursday?”
• “We gonna call his mom.”
• “Bad things happen to art majors too, mom.”
• How dare AT drink coffee!
• The elevator scene is pretty cool
• That’s a lot of dynamite
• The sidekick getting unraveled