indful of a 1930 audience that might be encountering this science-fiction stuff for the very first time, an opening documentary sequence carefully explains how this sort of thing works. See, 50 years ago, in 1880, most of the newfangled inventions we take for granted now, like automobiles and telephones, hadn't been invented yet. That's why New York looks so different now. And guess what? By 50 years from now, in the unimaginably far-off future of 1980, things will be more different still!
For instance, people won't drive around in cars but will fly from building to building in personal airplanes. They won't have names but serial numbers like AK-44 and B-36. Perhaps strangest of all, some women's clothing will actually be reversible, with different fabrics on each side, allowing a lady to change from afternoon to evening attire with just a few pulls of a zipper! Can you imagine such a thing?
For lovers J-21 (Garrick) and LN-18 (O'Sullivan), all of this dizzying technological innovation means little, as the government decides who's allowed to marry and he cannot compete with the credentials of his arrogant rival MT-3 (Thomson). J has only a few months left before the appeal, to distinguish himself.
Enter Single O (Brendel), a clownish refugee from 1930, revived in this strange new world, who will prove instrumental to the success of a mission to Mars ... and to J-21's chances of getting the girl.
An artifact from the past
As a comedy, as a musical and, most of all, as science fiction, Just Imagine's entertainment value is practically nil. The jokes are lame, the songs dull and the extrapolative content (but for that reversible garment) downright inane.
Before we get into the basis of its interest for a contemporary audience, we'll be fair and mention its single best moment. J-21 buys Single O lunch, which nowadays comes in the form of a pill from a vending machine. Single O kvetches: Give me the good old days. J-21 buys Single O a cocktail, which nowadays comes in the form of a pill from another vending machine. Single O kvetches: Give me the good old days. Finally, J-21 sees an attractive young couple decide it's time to have a baby. They buy one from a vending machine. And Single O kvetches, this time with special emphasis: Give me the good old days!
That scene is the highlight of the picture.
Here's the second best moment. Single O finds out that the most popular car is the Goldberg, and deduces that the Jews must have finally gotten even with (virulent anti-Semite) Henry Ford.
Yeah, I'm sorry. That's about as good as it gets.
But the movie itself is a fascinating artifact, in that, like so many Hollywood films set in some version of the future, its agenda is not to create a fascinating portrait of that future but to flatter the present. Single O may be an idiot, but he's cool enough to know that food tastes best when eaten and that alcohol is most fun when imbibed. Similarly, one way we're supposed to know that J-21 is a good guy is that he's exactly 50 years behind the times. He says he hates "modern women" and wants one exactly like his grandmother—not even his mother, who might have had him around 1955, but his grandmother, who is of course the same age as the ladies who bought a ticket to this thing in 1930. And just as naturally, the future is represented by people like the scientists who revive the man originally known as Peterson, later Single O—a bunch of eccentric, nasty folks whose inhumanity is captured by a series of reaction shots depicting them in grotesque, extreme close-up. It is Single O, the most humble of all men, a clown who speaks in a burlesque foreign accent, who speaks for the time the movie was made and who, for all his foibles, stands for values this future time is supposed to lack.
The same formula can be seen in many movies made during the 1950s and later on. The time traveler always finds the future a degraded version of his present. The movies comfort their audiences by assuring them that the best of all possible eras is now.
Little good can be said about the mission to Mars, which is of course fully habitable and the home of a native population disproportionately composed of exotically made-up ladies in glittery showgirl outfits. But the film's third best moment comes after the astronauts meet the female ruler of this world, when Single O says of an overly affectionate (male) guard that she's not the queen; he is. Not hilarious. But a joke that wouldn't have gotten past the production code only a few short years later.
