Time Machine: Quantum Leaps and Falls

I am going to write my review of The Time Machine as if traveling in a time machine. And since I will be time-traveling through nearly the entire movie, I will try and avoid plot spoilers as much as possible. Hey, give a movie geek like myself such a contraption and I'll come back from the future with reviews of the next two Star Wars flicks, the new two Lord of the Rings films, and naked Playboy photos of Britney Spears when she's 30 and needs the career boost (you know it will happen).

So, OK. Time circuits on. Flux capacitor powered up. Here we go:

FIVE MINUTES INTO THE TIME MACHINE

I'm hooked. I am loving the production design of this movie, the art direction, the costumes, and the performances. Guy Pearce plays Dr. Alexander Hartdegan, a physics professor in late 19th-century New York. His home laboratory is full of neat little turn-of-the-century gadgets. The streets he walks on feel real, like an idealized version of a Big Apple when horses and buggies mixed with the occasional steam-powered mechanical cars. As the movie opens, Alexander and his friend, Dr. David Philby (Mark Addy), are pondering Alexander's love life. This is the night that Alexander is to propose to his lady love, Emma (the radiant and memorable Sienna Guillory), in Central Park

TEN MINUTES IN

Still hooked. Heck, at this point, I'm absolutely enchanted. This is one beautiful movie to look at, and I am liking the witty dialogue and earnest characters. But then tragedy strikes. It's no big giveaway that Emma is accidentally shot and killed by a mugger (yes, Central Park had muggers even in the late 1800s) right before Alexander's eyes. Her death sends the scientist into seclusion. He starts making his computations for time warp. He WILL change the past.

TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES IN

I am SO into this movie! It is four years later, and a bearded and driven Alexander has completed his time machine. He has time-traveled back to that fateful night. He goes to intervene and succeeds initially. But then something goes wrong again. How could his trip back have the same effect under different circumstances (I'm being purposefully vague here to protect the plot)? Alexander reasons that he could travel back a thousand different times and see Emma die a thousand different ways. His answer must not be in the past, but in the FUTURE!

THIRTY MINUTES IN

Alexander travels to 2030 and is flabbergasted by what he sees. I shared this sense of wonderment, dear readers (or, for those of you who enjoyed my All About Benjamins review, my peeps). The time travel sequences in this movie are beautiful and astounding. A warp bubble forms around Alexander's time machine when activated. Inside the bubble, Alexander can look out from his stationary machine and see his environment change with the years. His lab becomes a warehouse that houses cars that become increasingly modern. Out the garage window, he can see a clothing store in which the dresses on the display-window mannequins change with the times. Then, we are treated to a bird's eye view of Manhattan and watch the ENTIRE city sprout up to what it may look like in 2030. The 2030 of the future is straight out of the Jetsons, crossed with Back to the Future Part II and even Coruscant from The Phantom Menace. Kudos to Scott Squires and the other wizards at Industrial Light and Magic for this brilliant sequence. Even amid the eye candy, director Simon Wells keeps his focus on Alexander. The heart-broken scientist still doesn't find the answers he seeks. Temporal physics has not progressed in 2030 to where it will convince him that the past is unchangeable. He chooses to go forward.

THIRTY FIVE MINUTES IN

Alexander jumps ahead to 2037, and again he is astonished at what he finds. So was I. The Earth is on the verge of an apocalypse due to its own short-sightedness. A desire to blast subterranean caverns in the moon and make them into lunar colonies has caused it to break apart and crash to Earth. Alexander narrowly escapes and is knocked out in the process. One problem. The time machine is still on. By the time he comes to, more than 800,000 years have passed (in another stunning CGI sequence) and Alexander finds himself in the middle of not an urban jungle, but a real jungle. He blacks out. I am still SO hooked. I am right there with the Alexander character, his lost and yearning soul, his aching need to know "Why?" Now this movie can get REALLY interesting!

FORTY-FIVE MINUTES IN

The first frown appears on my face. Alexander awakens to find a primitive human society made up of confused-looking extras from The Last of the Mohicans who have a language all their own. Well, except the hot babe of the village who speaks perfect English and is able to understand Alexander (English is thought of as a "baby language") and answer his questions. Alexander accepts and is accepted into his surroundings way, way, WAY to quick. In a matter of minutes it seems, he has developed a bond with the hot babe, Mara (singer Samantha Mumba), and her little brother (played by Mumba's real-life little brother, Omera). The movie slows down, and we start wondering why Alexander doesn't climb back into his time machine immediately and return to a better time. Oh, right! He can't change the past. He can travel to the past, but he just can't change it. The audience starts to REALLY question this logic.

SIXTY MINUTES IN

The words "What the Hell?" are now coming out of my mouth in regular intervals. True to the H.G. Wells book, the human primitives (called Eloi) are attacked by the other species that has survived and evolved, the Morlocks. The movie painfully devolves into a quasi-Planet of the Apes/Lord of the Rings rip-off in which the beasts are given far more attention to detail than the human characters. There is a human round-'em-up sequence just like in both versions of Apes. There are subterranean mines like in Rings and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Most inexplicably, Alexander suddenly turns into an action hero, battling the scary creatures with his fists, his feet, and pieces of tree bark. This is the same guy who took all of about five seconds to hand over his watch, his wallet, and his fianci to a Central Park mugger earlier in the film. Now we are to believe he can stand up to these computer-generated armies of screaming, flailing, orc-like, ape-like Cryptkeeper knockoffs?!

SEVENTY MINUTES IN

I am quietly hoping that someday I will get the opportunity to smack around someone associated with the making of this film. Jeremy Irons shows up as the "Uber-Morlock," in a role in which he basically appears for 10 minutes and "explains" everything. He gives Alexander the answer he has been seeking ("Why Can't I Change the Past?") From his subterranean lair, he essentially tells Alexander that he can't because the past is what shaped and brought him to this moment. Irons' character explains that he can read minds, levitate objects, use the Force. He can do everything except get a good tan. He controls the Morlocks, keeps them from exhausting their food supply on the surface. Alexander--now wearing a Fedora and sporting a bullwhip--takes it upon himself to save his woman, her brother, and a race of people who we have come to care nothing about.

EIGHTY MINUTES IN

OK, I am gonna stop revealing any more details right here. Suffice to say, the movie ends with a big fireworks show. You've seen that from the commercials. However, that's not the worst part. The worst part is the movie's climax involves Alexander time traveling forward then backward and then ... drum roll ... CHANGING THE PAST!!! OK, it's the past of the future. But still, you wonder: "If he can do that, then ... no, really, seriously ... why can't he go back and save Emma? Why can't he go back to the 21st century and prevent Armageddon? Why can't he give me that glimpse of the Britney issue I want circa 2010?"
OK, I only wondered the last part.

What it boils down to is this: I am recommending this movie with strong reservations. For those looking for a thoughtful and whimsical time-travel fantasy with romance and adventure, you'll hate when the thing devolves into a cookie-cutter, overly simplistic monster movie. For those wanting the monsters and the gore, you gotta sit through 45 minutes of Guy Pearce traveling from era to era in search of a way to save his lost love. The two don't mix. But when the movie is good, it's REALLY GOOD!

I know the movie is based on the classic H.G. Wells novel. In the book, though, when Alexander gets to 800,000 years in the future, Wells used the future society as a social satire of his own time. The subtext is completely missing in this slicker, updated version. Alexander moves from being a man of reaction to a man of action only because the script calls for it. And there is nothing on screen to convince us why he feels so strong so quickly for the Mara character.

I've always said that when a movie comes this close to greatness and then crumbles, it's far more disturbing than just sitting through an outright bad movie. Why can't more films be like the Rings and Star Wars movies, with one person delivering a cohesive, consistent vision.

Hmmm. Now that is an idea whose time has come!

The Time Machine is rated PG-13 for intense scenes of action violence.