I Can't See!

Peter Hyams' Timecop ('94), which I saw for the first time last weekend, is a kind-of mid-90's guilty pleasure - very much the usual Jean-Claude Van Damme routine with evil agency, big weirdo bad guys, family-in-danger stuff - it's basically Universal Soldier with time-traveling. 
-

-
Anyway, the film essentially (aside from a brief Wall Street 1929 stint) shifts back-and-forth between the "present" (2004) and the "past" (1994), in which Van Damme's wife (played by Mia Sara) is killed and a Senator is trying to manipulate time in a way that would guarantee his rise to presidency. 
-
For the most part, the "future" segments are handled with very little decorativeness in the way of production design, with one major exception, the cars. For some reason, the filmmakers thought that in ten years, we all might be driving these things around, built from the scrap heaps scrounged up by the Jawas on Tatooine.
-
Seriously, these things look like the surface of the Death Star, they're wretched - not to mention impractical. 
-
And the worst part of it is, you know it's just some maroon or teal '93 Acura under a flimsy lightweight kit and nothing else. It's got to be one of the most flabbergastingly awful production decisions made in movie history. I mean, those old B-westerns had wretchedly fake sets and matte paintings passing for the open prarie, but that's all they had, they couldn't exactly haul gear up to Monument Valley to shoot a 50-minute dime novel. Timecop: [B-]  Cars: [F]