To put it bluntly, this movie was terrible.
There are a vast number of "excuses" that people use to say that it wasn't so bad. It is a kids' movie. It stars young actors. It was filmed on a low budget. Even considering these circumstances, it was a dreadful movie. I've seen movies with a much lower budget and much younger actors, intended for a much younger audience, end up much more entertaining than this.
This movie was made with very little passion. It seems that the director knew from the beginning that he was going to make an amateur, generic, cliché film, and didn't try to do anything beyond that. And judging by the surnames of a few of the actors, I get the feeling that he cast his family members in roles; it wouldn't surprise me if he had given them out as birthday presents.
In this film so many tired, over-used elements were re-used shamelessly. There are one too many slime/manure/teasing jokes, and the entire plot centers around a bunch of pre-teens with the help of their (surprisingly old-looking) 8th grade big brother, stopping their "evil principal" from changing history. So these kids go back in time to prevent a crime from being committed.
This movie had so many chances to be good, but didn't take any of them. It's a great example of extremely lazy directing. (Take the "train scene," for example, each of the extras does exactly the same thing, faces the same direction, and does nothing.) Seriously, a movie has to TRY to be this bad. I actually got it for free on DVD when I bought a pizza. And the DVD didn't even contain subtitles.
I feel like the director probably said to his assistant director, "Nah, you can fake that, no one will notice," WAY too many times in this film.
Predictable, immature, simple, badly acted, badly written. (And I won't even start about this movie's sad, sad attempt at special effects.) The only positive is that maybe very young children will enjoy it, if they don't get lost in the vague plot. ....Maybe.
