Subject: Review: Time Machine, The (2002)

From: Homer Yen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 18:49:29 -0000

"The Time Machine"  -- Goes Everywhere and
Nowhere

Note to the makers of this film: Stop taking this
material so seriously!

When Einstein thought about the possibility of
time travel, he probably had a warehouse full of
blackboards.  And written upon them were endless
numbers, letters, squiggly lines, and geometric
shapes.  Stare at something like that long
enough, and you'll grow dizzy.  This may be
Einstein's playground, but how much fun are we
going to have?  Time travel for mere mortals like
you and me consists of starships whipping around
the sun while harnessing its gravitational field
or speeding down a highway in a silver DeLorean. 
Now that's fun.

Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) follows
Einstein's plan for fun and time travel.  He's a
brilliant mathematician who hopes to build a
machine to travel not miles but years.  He is
fueled in this obsession as a result of personal
tragedy that he suffers.  Perhaps if he could
travel back in time, the calamity could be
avoided.  So, he shuns his friends and colleagues
and fills his blackboards with endless amounts of
numbers, letters, squiggly lines, and geometric
shapes.  It's a recipe for his time machine, a
quaint-looking one-seat contraption with brass
knobs and dials with whirling spheres that
shimmer with light.  It's a must for every
science museum exhibit.  

Relieved and awed, his success is but a fleeting
event when he realizes that he is unable to
affect the past.  Why can't he change what has
been done?  He decides to travel to the future to
find an answer to that question.

The next 20 minutes features the best stuff about
this film.  It's primarily a barrage of whiz-bang
effects that show the time machine moving forward
through the years, centuries, and eons.  Using an
effect that mimics time lapse photography, we see
the landscape change dramatically.  Seasons come
and go; buildings are erected and torn down;
cities erupt all around.  In the distant future,
cataclysmic events reshape the topography as new
foliage, mountains and canyons are formed.  By
the time he has stopped some 8,000 centuries in
the future, he has seen a fusion-powered hologram
named Vox (Orlando Jones), witnessed the moon
break apart, and discovered that the human race
has splintered into a race of malicious
carnivores and sun-baked villagers who look
suspiciously tasty.

The predators, known as Morlocks, are an example
of Darwinian evolution gone awry. The villagers,
known as Eloi, are forced to live in
well-protected villages that straddle the sides
of gorges.  Again, these visual renderings are
stunningly beautiful.

Alas, the wonderment of time travel stops here. 
And there's still 60 minutes of film left.

The intrepid traveler finds himself trying to
rescue the hapless Eloi from the jaws of the
hungry Morlocks.  It's a formidable task.  But
it's an unremarkable adventure.  Other than
watching Jeremy Irons gleefully ham it up as the
Morlock leader, these grunting neo-Neanderthals
might as well be writing endless numbers,
letters, squiggly lines, and geometric shapes.

"The Time Machine" is 50%
ooh-check-out-these-special-effects while the
other evolves into a banal boy-meets-girl,
boy-saves-girl kind of story.  It's ostensibly
missing pathos.  It's missing the expected sense
of grand adventure that time travel should bring.
 At the very least, "The Time Machine" is missing
a seat belt.  That sure would come in handy as
your whipping through the time-space continuum
and speeding across the centuries.  Consequently,
this vehicle is a bumpy ride.

Grade:  C

S:	0 out of 3
L:	0 out of 3
V:	2 out of 3

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X-RAMR-ID: 31304
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 294515
X-RT-TitleID: 1112951
X-RT-AuthorID: 1370
X-RT-RatingText: C