Random Quest (2006 TV Movie) User Reviews

A parallel universe love story

[Jackbv123 · 6/10 · 1 August 2017]

Colin gets pulled to a parallel universe due to a particle accelerator accident. He then falls in love with the woman, Ottillee, that his parallel self is married to.

The pace of the story can be agonizingly slow as typified in one scene which has a long boring sequence watching him shave and dress. A similar paced scene is watching him explore his parallel house.

The romantic part is not so much slow as having too little. We do see several scenes with Ottillee partially dressed in underwear or nightclothes that take up a lot of the screen time that could have been better spent building the romance. It is not even clear why Colin chose to exert himself to repair the marriage that his parallel self has damaged due to negligence and infidelity.

The movie is also cluttered with an excess of scientific so-called theory. There is enough real science to obscure where the theory becomes pure speculation. The movie would have had better pace with less of it.

There is nothing extraordinary about the story, but it is good enough to at least partially make up for the slow development. Nevertheless, I'm a sucker for a love story especially if you throw in some sci-fi.

A decent sci-fi TV film which could have benefited from better writing and direction

[GusF · 7/10 · 24 June 2015]

This is the second adaptation of the 1954 short story of the same name by John Wyndham that I have seen in the last two weeks, the first being the brilliant 1971 film "Quest for Love". All three of them have the same basic storyline: due to a failed experiment, a physicist named Colin Trafford is sent to a parallel universe where his counterpart is a successful author and complete bastard who is married to a woman named Ottilie Harsham, with whom he promptly falls in love. This adaptation is more faithful to the short story than the film but it is not as good as it retains many of the story's problems which the film eliminated. To paraphrase my recent review of the film, its screenwriter Terence Feely gave Ottilie a fatal heart condition which gave Colin's search for her counterpart once he returned to his own universe a great sense of urgency and a greater moral dimension as well as making her even more unattainable.

I cannot criticise Kate Ashfield's performance as she does the best that she can with the material but this version of Ottilie does not have much in the way of personality, in contrast to Joan Collins' version. Samuel West is very good as Colin but the character likewise never comes alive in the way as Tom Bell's version. The same is true of the character's love affair. The major problems with the film are its writing and direction, both of which are fairly pedestrian. It is only 58 minutes long but, for some reason, either the screenwriter Richard Fell or the director Luke Watson decided that it was a good idea to waste about five minutes having Colin wander around like a headless chicken while examining his far more financially successful counterpart's big but, for my tastes, tacky house as well as examining his convertible and swimming pool. It doesn't add anything to the proceedings and it would have been a better idea to trim these scenes significantly, not least because the ending feels rushed. That said, the short story had much the same problem, which is another of its problems which the 1971 version managed to solve.

In both the short story and the film, Colin is confronted with information which suggests that he is in a parallel universe almost immediately and does not meet Ottilie until sometime later. In the former, he reads a newspaper which states that India is still a British colony in 1954 and Rab Butler is the Prime Minister. In the latter, he reads an edition of "The News Chronicle" which states that JFK is the new Secretary-General of the League of Nations, all three of which were long gone in reality by 1971. In this version, Fell switches the order around and I think that it was a mistake as what exactly has happened is not made clear from the beginning. If I had not known what it was about already, I might have assumed that Colin did not know Ottilie who was as he had lost his memory of the time between the accident and waking up in a strange house rather than having been sent to a parallel universe.

When it does address some of the differences, however, most of them are fairly interesting: Condoleezza Rice is the US President, the still living John Smith is the Prime Minister, the US and Japan are on the verge of war, the UK is experiencing widespread drought, human cloning has just been legalised to combat the fertility problem in the West and there was a manned mission to Mars sometime in the past. The most interesting, however, is not mentioned until after Colin returns to his own universe: glasnost and perestroika never happened and so the Cold War continued intensifying until the US and the Soviet Union "burned themselves out," leading China to become the most powerful country in the world. I know that it was not the point of the film but it would have been nice if they had explored that a little more.

Overall, this is a decent sci-fi TV film but it could have benefited from better writing and direction and another half an hour to explore the material. The best version of the story is still "Quest for Love" without a doubt.

Random Quest

[MrFilmAndTelevisionShow · 7/10 · 1 January 2022]

I think the premise is really quite good the acting is superb as well, naturally with what is obviously a low budget they are limited in what they are able to achieve in the visual medium but what they do achieve is pretty good, I enjoyed it, it's not often you find a film like this with a happy ending either it was a nice way to finish off the year on a high note (I watched yesterday, and am reviewing today).

Intriguing even if it is not as impacting or as intelligent as it could have been

[bob the moo · 10 September 2007]

Colin is a research scientist who is working at a nuclear reactor as part of a team trying to simulate a black hole. The experiment goes wrong and the next thing he knows, Colin wakes up in bed in a white room in a strange house. Next thing he knows his "wife" has come home and he is dealing with calls from people he does not know. The few he does recognise seem to not know him in the way that that he thinks he knows them. Although it is a jump to get there, Colin concludes that the black hole experiment has forced him into a parallel universe and that his alternative has gone somewhere else. While this mystifies him, Colin also enjoys his new life and starts to build on it.

I'll be honest and say that when I read about parallel universes and jumping around between them I had expected more from it than this film delivered in the sci-fi realm. It doesn't really explore the concept from the sci-fi point of view but it does do it from a character point of view. This side takes the form of a sort of romantic plot where Colin tries to build a life in his parallel world while also figuring out what has actually happened. It is not as fascinating as it should have been though and discussions over the theory are mostly superficial and not followed through. What it does do well though is give interesting characters and a structure that suggests more mystery than there actually is. The ending is a "nice" conclusion but it is not that clever or impacting The writing does do a good job of building the characters and they are brought out well. West takes the lead pretty well and seems more comfortable with the story inside his character's head than the sci-fi element. Parkes is good in support but it was Ashfield's turn that made the emotional core of the story work – she was convincing even as her character changed. As director Watson does a good job of it and the locations were well chosen and delivered (how much for that house?! Probably too much…).

Overall though I did struggle to overcome the disappointment that the central sci-fi concept was not worked for more benefit. The relationship side of it did provide interest but it was not quite enough on its own and I would have appreciated more of the sci-fi worked into it; as it was it could easily have lost the parallel world aspect and still worked as a story about marriage being rebuilt.

Unwatchable

[stegasaurob · 1/10 · 21 August 2021]

This might be great, but Amazon have uploaded it in the wrong aspect ratio so it's pretty much unwatchable.

A Quality Parallel Universe Experience

[tabuno · 8/10 · 17 January 2019]

28 February 2013. Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969) offered a similar but more mystery thriller suspense bent to Random Quest and its more extended psychological experiential focus. In some ways Random Quest takes the "if what" genre, like It's A Wonderful Life (1946) but instead of an Angel there is a black hole, alternative universe explanation. What brings this movie to life is a brilliant architecture display and ethereal musical score, along with some fascinating hypothetical alternative contemporary historical propositions that are on display in this movie.

The continuity, editing, shortness of the movie created some disjointed and abrupt character changes in the movie, especially during the earlier sequences. The very opening sequence seems a little out of the blue and confusing. Nevertheless, this parallel universe had more depth than say The Thirteenth Floor (1999) which again focused more an the thriller aspect than the qualitative relational theme of Random Quest.

"Flatland" comes to the screen, without meaning to.

[grainstorms · 4/10 · 26 December 2012]

"Random Quest," based on a John ("Day of the Triffids") Wyndham science fiction parallel universes yarn, shows the BBC at its not-quite top- drawer. Here a so-so love story is made to trump an ingenious fictional study of Einsteinian paradoxes. One of the problems is the actor Sam West. His sluggish portrayal of the chief character is a nice demonstration of human entropy. He starts off so boring as to nearly vanish from the scene and winds up as one of those British vacuum cleaners marketed in infomercials, sucking most of the air and substance out of this romantic science fiction drama and turning it into a two-dimensional "Flatland." The rest of the cast performs adequately, but nobody seems to have really tried to make a difference. There is an attempt at an interesting walk-and-talk discussion of quantum mechanics, but that stops in mid-track. Much of the action takes place in a very modern home that sports a long and narrow basement swimming pool and a cramped closet-like bedroom. At first apparently quite striking, the home reveals itself to be an awkward space more like a very contemporary shop window than a house. If you're interested in how a talented cast and director can breathe life into a story about alternate realities, you only have to watch an episode of "Fringe." Otherwise, there's no parallel.

Satisfying

[johnmcc150 · 8/10 · 9 January 2007]

This is a beautifully acted BBC drama. A neat twist on one of the standard plots: the boy meets girl, boy loses girl and then boy finds girl again. In this version the man finds that he is married to a woman who his 'twin' has taken for granted and falls in love with her only to lose her temporarily. The acting can best be seen in the way that Sam West and Kate Ashfield behave towards each other: firstly in a marriage that is on the rocks and a few weeks later in a marriage in which they are in love. I defy anyone not to say 'Aaah' at the ending and to have a smile on their face. The supporting cast, especially David Burke, were entirely realistic and well-judged.

The script has a few holes which I quickly forgave. No-one is going to land on Jupiter. Colin also claims that history began to diverge in the 1980's and yet the death of Kate Gales's father in 1974 showed that it had already diverged there. These are minor quibbles. All in all it is a good illustration of why we pay the BBC's licence fee. Mercifully there is no spin-off series.

Terrible, Just Terrible...

[timdanaher · 1/10 · 13 December 2019]

Completely misses what made the original short story so magical: here, Colin Trafford finds himself in a completely different world, rather than the subtly different world of the original, and how he finds Otillie is completely different from the original: Wyndham's story, as written, is human, moving and believable - this version is cold, sterile and completely unengaging.

Random Boredom

[jabrbi · 3/10 · 17 August 2014]

This is a BBC production, so the technical aspects are as good as ever from the BBC, with good acting, sound, editing, lighting, etc. Sadly, the script lets the whole thing down, followed by direction that seems to insist on providing a glacial pace.

Alternate reality Science Fiction where a research scientist is mysteriously shifted from one universe into another parallel universe where much of his life has changed. Instead of exploring the scientific aspects of the swap, and comparing the differences between the universes, most of the film is taken up with creating/rekindling a relationship between the man and his wife in the alternate reality. It's sort of a Time Travellers Wife situation, or an amnesiac trying to reintegrate himself into his life.

And all of this happens at glacial speed.

So, drop the science fiction aspect, give the man amnesia and the story works just as well, and just as boringly. This film isn't about exploring the possibility of alternate realities, it's a film about ruined relationships and trying to piece them back together again.

If I wanted to sum this film up I'd say - Not As Advertised.

If you want a slightly surreal amnesiac romance story watch this film. If you want some decent science fiction, try watching The Terminator again.