MOVIE REVIEW :: The Time Machine

IF I COULD TRAVEL BACK IN TIME, I WOULD GET MY MONEY BACK
There is an unwritten rule when remaking a movie: the new version must be better than the original, or, as is the case with Tim Burton's The Planet of the Apes, a new interpretation with the basic elements still intact. The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce, does not qualify as either.

That's not to say that the original Time Machine was a spectacular piece of cinema. Based on author H.G. Wells science fiction novel of thesame name, the 1960 film showed an ominous view of the future where the human race has split into two. The more powerful of the two species, The Morlocks, dwell underground and prey upon humans above the surface. Pretty cool stuff for that era, I imagine. If I had been born 27 years earlier, I would have gone to see it.

It has now been 107 years since Wells wrote The Time Machine, and it is safe to say that our generation has different ideas about the future.

Rather than using the original as a model to create his own vision, Director Simon Wells (H.G.'s great-grandson) has basically recreated the first film with not-so special effects and bad dialogue.

Pearce stars as Alexander Hartdegen, an absent-minded math professor who builds a time machine after losing someone close to him. Alexander soon learns that fate cannot be changed, so he journeys into the future instead to see what will become of the world. To make a short story shorter, he accidentally ends up some 800,000 years into the future where, as in the original, humans have split into two species. Why he bothers to hang out in this savage period is a mystery, especially when his machine still works once he arrives.

Some of what made the original film fun was its campiness, the graininess of the footage and the utter lack of special effects. In this updated version, all of that is lost and replaced with a story that takes itself to seriously and special effects which, if you've seen Star Wars: Episode I or The Lord of the Rings, are not terribly impressive. That in itself is a disappointment because the visual effects are unquestionably the star of this vehicle.

You certainly can't blame Pearce. Anyone who has seen L.A. Confidential or Memento can concur – the guy can act. He does his best to give a solid, realistic performance as the time traveler, but with the dimwitted script he never had a chance.

There are so many improbabilities in The Time Machine it is on the verge of silliness. How the professor builds a machine that can travel in time when, early on in the movie, he marvels at the sight of an automobile, should offend viewers.

The filmmakers again insult our intelligence in the time traveling sequences. The earth drastically changes throughout time, yet there is his machine, sitting in the same spot, apparently unaffected by construction, falling space debris and a second ice age. If he had zipped into some hole in the space-time continuum, OK, whatever. But it's nonsense that his machine would conveniently stop in between two buildings when, in all likelihood, a skyscraper should have been on sitting on his head is inexcusable.

If I could travel back in time, I would get my money back.