Movie Info

RATING:

PG-13

RELEASE:

March 8, 2002

TIME:

96 minutes

STARRING:

Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law, Sienna Guillory, Omero Mumba, and Alan Young

DIRECTOR:

Simon Wells

PRODUCERS:

Walter F. Parkes and David Valdes

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS:

Laurie MacDonald, Arnold Leibovit and Jorge Saralegui

WRITER:

John Logan

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY:

H. G. Wells

DISTRIBUTOR:

DreamWorks

GENRE:

Science Fiction

INTENDED AUDIENCE:

Teenagers & adults

 

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MOVIE REVIEW

The Time Machine

By Movieguide Magazine

What's This?

CBN.com - The original Time Machine in 1960 was a good natured, thought provoking trifle that won a lot of fans. The author of the short novel on which the movie was based, H. G. Wells, often reflected some of the Christian worldview in his imaginative stories, despite his Fabian Socialist sympathies. This version of The Time Machine tries hard to be more serious than the original movie and also to highlight some of the moral and allegorical elements of the story. It does not always succeed, but it is a valiant effort.

Opening in 1899 in New York City, Alexander Hartdegen is an associate professor in physics and applied mechanics at Columbia University. He is intrigued by time travel and gets overwhelmed by his work, including his correspondence with a clerk in Germany named Albert Einstein. He is also much in love with Emma, a very beautiful girl who sees something in Alex that may not be immediately apparent to the audience. As Alex is proposing to Emma in Central Park, a robber holds them up and Emma is shot accidentally.

Alex dedicates the next four years of his life to building a time machine to go back and save Emma. He does go back, but Emma is killed in another way, in a manner that is one of the few laugh-out-loud gaffs in the story. Now, Alex is determined to find out why he cant change the past.

Forgetting that he just did, because the manner of her death changed, Alex time travels off into the future to seek the answer to his question. He visits New York in 2030 where he talks to a computer hologram that contains all the knowledge of the New York Library and, supposedly, all the libraries in the world. The computer scoffs at his idea of time travel, so Alex edges forward to 2037, where he finds out that New York is being destroyed by bits of the moon that are falling apart due to misguided mining of the earths satellite.

Alex escapes the police and rockets forward to the year 802,701. He wakes up to being cared for by a young Eloi woman, Mara, and her little brother. Everything looks beautiful with her agricultural society, which is suspended on the side of cliffs in unique basket-like cliff dwellings, but, as everyone who read the book remembers, there is a dark secret. The Eloi are merely sheeple to feed the Morlocks, a brawny race of underground dwellers. Alex challenges the Eloi to stand up to the Morlocks when they capture Mara during one of their Eloi hunting parties.

In the process of going to rescue Mara, Alex finds the Uber Morlock, a devilish figure, if there ever was one, who informs Alex that you cannot change evolutionary determinism. Alex decides to prove the evil Uber Morlock wrong and commits himself to staying with Mara and the Eloi.

There is much good news in The Time Machine, not the least of which is that the devils attempt to convince Alex that life is fated is proved totally wrong by Alexs final exercise of his moral free will. The Time Machine also includes a quote from Scripture, a redemptive willingness to lay down ones life for others, a recognition that theres a time for peace and a time for war, and a repeated emphasis on God speed. Furthermore, the movie shows loyalty, friendship, chivalry, and decency.

That said, the movie has a few all-too-obvious flaws, which are not nearly as bad as last years Planet Of The Apes or Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. However, they stem from the same storytelling mistake. As Gene Roddenbury pointed out in his creation of Star Trek, a filmmaker can create his own fantastic world, but no matter how fanciful that world is, you need to be true to the physical laws that you set up in that universe. The Time Machine does not necessarily break its own laws, but it does ignore them at critical points, and the audience at the press screening was all too ready to catch these story flaws. All of these could have been fixed with a little script supervision. In fact, I was sitting next to a producer, who went on a long diatribe about how movies get off track when there are too many cooks in the kitchen.

That said, The Time Machine should be commended for being an exciting action vehicle. Guy Pearce does a serviceable job, although one wishes they had chosen a more charismatic hero. He does have angst down, however, to a fine science. The supporting cast was good, especially Jeremy Irons, who could be the Devil Incarnate considering his other roles. Jeremy is a fine actor and brought a lot of power to his scene, at a point when one was getting tired of all the Morlocks being too similar.

That is another flaw to The Time Machine. Lucas in Star Wars said that he spent much time in the original movie creating characters who had individual personalities. Therefore, there are scenes in that movie that are indelibly etched on peoples minds because of this. Regrettably, the Morlocks in The Time Machine have no personality except for their leader, the Uber Morlock. Here too, a little tweaking of the script could have gone a long way.

Some of the fight sequences in The Time Machine are way too frightening for young children and could have been toned down, because the movie as a whole is not scripted in a salacious or cutting edge manner. There are many exciting moments and some terrific camera work, especially as Alex and Mara flee the Morlock caves.

In all, The Time Machine is an interesting, fun diversion that makes some good, moral and even redemptive points. It is not for young children, but older children will not be corrupted by it and they may even take some valuable lessons away from.

Please address your comments to:

David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg & Steven Spielberg
DreamWorks SKG
1000 Flower Street
Glendale, CA 91201
(818) 695-5000

The previous reviews are a selected sample of informative reviews from MOVIEGUIDE: A FAMILY GUIDE TO MOVIES AND ENTERTAINMENT, a syndicated feature of Good News Communications, Inc. To subscribe to MOVIEGUIDE, which includes a complete set of at least 10 reviews of the latest movies as well as many informative articles, please visit their Web site at http://www.movieguide.org/, or write or call:

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