The Time Machine Review
by Tim Wick

The Time Machine is a frustrating film to review. It is not good enough to spend time complementing it's structure but it is not bad enough to enjoy the process of ridiculing it's many faults. Instead, the film languishes somewhere in an abyss of mediocrity.

The biggest weakness with the film is the fact that it is 30 minutes long on exposition and 30 minutes short on resolution. Had the filmmakers noticed that their motivation for the time traveler was actually pretty dull and took way too long to establish, they might have been able to fix the film. They would probably have taken that 30 minutes and added it to the end of the film which was the interesting part that ended far too fast.

Now, for you Time Machine purists who want to know what this film has to do with the book, I can confidently state that it eventually involves a pair of races named the Eloi and the Morlocks. After that, any similarities are purely coincidental.

But the George Pal version of The Time Machine bore little resemblance to the novel either and it was actually a decent film. At issue here are not the liberties this film takes with the source material, but the fact that the liberties taken do nothing to make the story any better.

Wells' original novel was a caution that the exploited workers would eventually rise up against their opressors and eventually eat them. Pal recognized that the socialist message would not work with his audience and so he made his film a warning about the consequences of nuclear war. The current version (directed by Wells' great-grandson, Simon Wells) is about a guy who travels through time so he can figure out how to get his girlfriend back.

His most important discovery is that if you travel far enough into the future, you will wind up in a really good looking matte painting. A friend who saw the picture with me suggested that the future had obviously been designed by someone who had spent a little too much time playing Riven.

The future could have been really interesting and is for all of 20 minutes. Problem is that the film should have spent at least 60 minutes in the interesting future that it barely touched upon. Instead, we got a double helping of the past that - as I've stated before - wasn't all that interesting.

Guy Pearce (who should look for more films with scripts like Memento) plays the time traveler Alexander. His fiancee is murdered and so he tries to find a way to save her life by travelling back in time to prevent the murder from happening. Other people who saw the film with me saw no problem with this motivation. I think it was pretty stupid and pointless and ultimately prevents the film from becoming anything but a mild diversion while we wait impatiently for Spider-Man.

When the Morlocks finally show up, they are really scary and far more interesting than any primate in last year's Planet of the Apes. I really enjoyed this part of the film - stupid plot holes and all. But it came too late and somebody decided that the film should only run ninety minutes. The result was a film that executed a deus ex machine to abruptly end rather than making a two hour movie I could actually recommend.

The Time Machine is what we have grown to expect from big budget Hollywood sci-fi flicks. That is as much of a reason as any to suggest you spend your money on something else.

The Time Machine

Two and a half Beakers
(out of five)

The Time Machine Review
by Ishmael Williams

So let's get right to it - I am annoyed with this one.

This is the 2002 remake of the classic film, an adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel. The 2002 film makers have taken a story that was about the journey of exploration and discovery and turned into an action adventure tale about the destination of the future. Ugh.

Alexander Hartdegen is a teacher of physics and mechanical engineering, and suffers a tragic loss. He then invents a machine to transport him to a time before that loss so he can correct the mistake. This would seem to be a noble cause, and the question now is does he succeed? That would be telling, and I won't in the off chance that the reader elects to see this movie. I wouldn't recommend it.

In this version, the main character's ultimate motivation for making the journey is revealed towards the end of the film. It is a weak motivation at best, and falls far short of what purported to be the original motivation. Trust me, the original was better.

As the story wound to its end, i found myself squirming in my seat, at least mentally, because it became obvious that this version was not headed where the original went. I kept hoping, and yet somehow knew I was hoping against hope, and sure enough, I was disappointed. How could the people who made this version have missed the point of the original story?

The acting was, well, acting. I did enjoy Guy Pearce's portrayal in the early going of the film of the befuddled professor. Not absent minded, but so caught up in the wonders of his "modern" world, and so against the established norm, that he was quite often distracted. That was fun. But later, the logical mind ceases to function logically, and his choices don't make real sense. However, overall, i do like Guy Pearce, and he accounts for one-half of the one beaker I give this movie.

The other half of the baker is earned by Orlando Jones, who turns in a nice performance as a "phototonic" interactive interface to a master computer which stores the sum of all human knowledge. He is both amusing and capable of being human in a computerized but non mechanized sort of way.

Really, any time travel episode of Star Trek; any episode of Quantum Leap; even just about any episode of Time Tunnel is going to be more emotionally satisfying than this film. And probably even more mentally stimulating. One beaker is it - and I still say give it a pass.

The Time Machine

One Beaker
(out of five)

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