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The Time Machine

Rating

Director

Simon Wells

Screenplay

David Duncan, John Logan (Novel: H.G. Wells)

Length

1h 36m

Starring

Guy Pearce, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law, Sienna Guillory, Laura Kirk, Josh Stamberg

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

When H.G. Wells envisioned a machine that would allow its occupant to travel backwards and forwards in time, “The Time Machine” was his creation. Now his great grandson has taken the helm of his first live-action feature.

Guy Pearce is Professor Alexander Hartdegen, a prominent mathematician who has devised a device that allows him to accelerate time both into the future and into the past. His impetus for building the device is his fiancée Emma (Sienna Guillory) who is killed by a thief on a snow-covered trail one evening. When his first attempt to go back in time and thwart the incident fails, he resorts to attempting to find an answer in the future where technology will surely have solved his problem.

After visiting several time periods in the future, he finds that nothing is what it appears to be and when he accidentally knocks himself unconscious in the machine while attempting to escape a group of police officers in the future, he travels several millennia into Earth’s future. There a tribal teenager named Mara (Samantha Mumba) and her younger brother Kalen (Omero) rescue him. After the initial language barrier is broken, Alex learns that the future he has found has no adults, all having been dragged away by a fearsome humanoid monster.

With Wells’ great grandson (Simon) at the helm, it should have been a foregone conclusion that the film would have captured every essence that Wells would have wanted involved. Unfortunately, Wells has had a marginal career with previous directing credits only for animated features like the similarly marginal “The Prince of Egypt.” The film lacks dramatic interest and attempts to be far more introspective than it really is. Much of what’s on the screen is artificial.

Pearce, whose previous performance in “Memento” was exquisite, finds himself in the opposite position. His performance is weak and unimpressive. As the star of the film, it’s his to carry, but he doesn’t do a very good job. Likewise, Jeremy Irons, who plays the villain of the film, has found himself stereotyped and continues to overact in each of these roles. The audience can only take so much hissing and glaring before they become tired of the act. With his previous role in “Dungeons & Dragons,” Irons has fallen off a steep cliff.

On the other side, Mumba, as Alex’s tribal love Mara, is much better than her male counterparts. She conveys a rushed sense of purpose that none of the others possess. She embodies the terror and passion necessary to her role all while supporting the acting weaknesses of her counterparts.

On the technical front, the film is phenomenal. The production design and costuming are exact and the cinematography is beautiful. The best part of the film is the swift and impressive visual effects. The breadth of the work is in the temporal fast forward sequences where time, both past and present, changes around the machine, but not in it. The graphic work is impressive and fits every bit of the setting and time period.

The film has many salient points. The graphics are astounding and well worth the time, while the morality of time alteration for selfish goals is engrossing. However, “Time Machine” also has several key plot errors and a relatively unimpressive cast.

“The Time Machine” is a tough journey with many roadblocks. The audience must dodge each of these impediments with great care in order to capture the essence of the original novel. Unfortunately, these barriers provide too much frustration and the end result is a good, but flawed motion picture.

Awards Prospects

If it isn’t forgotten by the end of the year, “The Time Machine” should figure into the Visual Effects Oscar race, but will likely not be found elsewhere.

Review Written

May 3, 2002