Subject: Review: Time Machine, The (2002)

From: Rose 'Bams' Cooper <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 19:33:11 -0000

'3BlackChicks Review...'

THE TIME MACHINE (2002)
Rated PG-13; running time 96 minutes
Studios: DreamWorks/Warner Brothers
Genre: Science Fiction
Seen at: Celebration Cinema (Lansing, Michigan)
Official site: http://www.countingdown.com/timemachine/
IMDB site: http://us.imdb.com/Details?0268695
Written by: John Logan, Simon Wells
  (based on the book by H.G. Wells)
Directed by: Simon Wells
Cast: Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Orlando Jones, Jeremy Irons,
Mark Addy, Omero Mumba, Sienna Guillory, Phyllida Law

Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002
Review URL: http://www.3blackchicks.com/2002reviews/bamstime.html

I wish I were a pitch writer for movies.  I have a few that I'd offer up
for this one...

    THE TIME MACHINE: The Land That [You Wish] Time Forgot!
    THE TIME MACHINE: It's Your Time; Let Us Waste It!
    THE TIME MACHINE: Trashing A Good Actor's Career In Triple Speed!
    THE TIME MACHINE: Bet You Wish You Were Watching MEMENTO Now, Huh?

THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**)
Professor Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) has a beautiful mind that he
doesn't wish to be wasted under a conforming bowler hat.  Hartdegen, a
scientist and inventor, Thinks Different, and is surprised that the rest
of the world doesn't move to his rapid pace.  His pace is so rapid, in
fact, that he almost forgets to pop the question to his girlfriend Emma
(Sienna Guillory).  But wouldn't you know it: Tragedy Ensues, plunging
Hartdegen into a four-year funk from which not even his best friend and
colleague Dr. Philby (Mark Addy) or his housekeeper, Mrs. Watchit
(Phyllida Law), can rouse him.

Hartdegen builds a time machine so that he can change the events of the
recent past, but somehow concludes that his answer lies elsewhere,
prompting him to go back to the future: the way-ether time of
800,000+AD.  There, he meets Raquel Welch...I mean, Mara (Samantha
Mumba), mouthpiece for the Peaceful Enoi tribe of creatures who haven't
really evolved much in the 800,000+ years since his time.  And where
there's a Peaceful tribe, there's gotta be a dark side, right?
Riiiiight.

THE UPSHOT
You ever go out to see a new flick, and wish you had just gone to
Blockbuster instead?  If you're anything like me, THE TIME MACHINE will
make you wish just that.  TIME AFTER TIME - the much better, though only
slightly related - version of H.G. Wells' time-travel story, kept
popping in my head after Hartdegen landed in the way-ether time of
800,000+AD.  I found TIME AFTER TIME much more enjoyable than THE TIME
MACHINE, even though the first movie steered far clear of pere Wells'
Morlocks and Enoi.  Maybe even *because* the first movie steered far
clear of them.

THE TIME MACHINE started out fine, lulling the viewer into an accepting
state with its sad (at first) story of a lost soul and decent (at first)
CG and special effects.  Had it spent most of its time in the past and
the near-future, telling us more about what made Hartdegen tick, I might
have found this movie a pleasant, non-threatening diversion.  But my
head started to spin as I watched the veil get slowly drawn back, asking
me to accept inanity after patronizing inanity, with plot holes big
enough to drive a Humvee through.  H.G.'s great-grandson Simon's vision
of the future got progressively more silly, culminating in the
laughingly doofiest SuperBad Tough Guy (Jeremy Irons) since John
Travolta in BATTLEFIELD: EARTH - and it *still* managed to get worse
from there, as if it was in a contest to see just how bad a movie can
evolve into before the closing credits.

As the Neo-Primitives, Samantha Mumba (Alexander's probable New Squeeze,
Mara), her real-life brother Omero (Mara's brother Kalen) and the other
Peaceful Eloi tribe, reminded me of that STAR TREK episode where Kirk
comes down and saves its version of backwards natives from a mean ol'
Godzilla-looking stone statue demigod.  By the looks of things, Simon
Wells watched that episode, too.  Poor Simon; I guess 96 minutes just
wasn't enough time for him to include Pretty Pictures *and* a coherent
story.

I felt the most sorry for Guy Pearce; after he and his brilliantly
mind-bending MEMENTO were so badly robbed at Oscar(R) nominations time,
I was hoping that the next movie I'd see him in would set the screen
a'fire.  Alas, it was this movie that most deserved to go up in a blaze.
I guess there's one consolation: at least Orlando Jones (A.I. Vox)
didn't play the customary Clown.  Small comfort, though, when the movie
around him was a joke.

BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE
I wish I could go back in time and erase any memory I have of watching
this goofy flick.  Next time I get a hankerin' for some H.G. Wells, I
think I'll head for the video store and rent TIME AFTER TIME instead.
Where's Cyndi Lauper when you need her?

     THE TIME MACHINE rating: flashing redlight

Rose "Bams" Cooper
Webchick and Editor,
3BlackChicks Review
Entertainment Reviews With Flava!
Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002
EMAIL: [email-masked]
http://www.3blackchicks.com/

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