Album Reviews
Movies
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Contact Us

H. G. Wells is one of the world's classic novelists.  The Time Machine  was not only was ahead of its time, but offered commentary on social evolution that is frightening to comprehend.  Even more frightening is this soundtrack by Klaus Badelt.  Why, when the time traveler lands in the future and a warm climate, does the music have to sound like something from The Lion King_?  One half expects to see the shadow of mouse ears on a wall.

Guy Pearce (The Count of Monte Cristo) stars as Alexander Hartdegen, a forgetful physicist who is in love with Emma (Sienna Guillory).  When tragedy strikes, Alexander feverishly works for years to invent a time machine to go back and change the circumstances.  However, he can't, and herein lies a new time travel concept: you can go back, but  mortality still occurs one way or another.  Alexander decides just to travel and eventually lands over 800,000 years in the future.  Earth has been decimated by a disintegrating moon, evolution has gone awry, but humanoids are still there.

The Time Machine without Guy Pearce would have been titled, The Time-Bomb Machine.  His lean look and hungry eyes make you believe in his character as that of a man with tragedy in his heart.  The rest of the cast, with the exception of an unrecognizable Jeremy Irons as an underground villain, might as well go home. Except  the time machine itself, a marvel of solar panels, brass, antique automobile, laser beam and dials. This thing should get itself an agent.  We don't exactly know HOW it works, but the fact that it WORKS is enough.    Also, this is one car-time machine that always starts.  None of this will-it-start or where-is-my-key. The rascal was made for dependability.

Singer Samantha Mumba makes her acting debut here.  She is barely adequate, and hardly registers with the audience.  The writers intended her to be the new love interest, but if there are sparks here, they are out of camera range. Orlando Jones, as the obligatory comic relief, plays a library hologram that keeps reappearing wherever there is a shiny surface. Mark Addy is Alexander's friend and passes through the film like quicksilver.  Phyllida Law as the caring housekeeper is actress Emma Thompson's mother. Sienna Guillory makes a deeper impression as the lost love who lingers almost a million years in Alexander's mind. 

Wells saw the world evolving into two distinct species, those who live above ground and are passive and predators who live below ground.  In 2002, passive is beautiful while predator looks like a reject from Lord of the Rings, and their underground mines.  The catastrophe caused by mankind may change from version to version of this classic, but we still have to live with the consequences.  WHAT IF, the dinosaurs had superior brains and lived underground, while man was a wimp and lived in the sunlight? The survival of the fittest doesn't always have to be one species.   Food for thought.

Copyright 2002 Marie Asner
Submitted 3/11/02.

In The Time Machine, Alexander Hartdegen, after seeing his fiancee shot and killed  during a mugging, decides to build a time machine to change the past and save her life.  He succeeds in building the time machine and saving her from dying by the gunshot, but only to watch her die in a more horrific accident a few minutes later. After this, he goes on a journey through time to find out why he can not change the past and ends up in  the  future thousands of years later. Well, you know the story. And, in some respects, that's part of the problem with this film. You know it already, thus you expect something more. You expect to see some depth in the characters and the plot of this 1960 remake. But, you don't. You walk out of the theater with a handful of  rehashed special effects and cardboard characters. 

 It's really disappointing to see Guy Pearce, who was truly fantastic in films such like  Memento and The Count of Monte Cristo, walk through the role as the mathematician, Hartdegen. It's also disappointing to see Simon Wells, the great-grandson of H.G. Wells,  direct so weakly in a movie based on his own great-grandfather's novel. It was so bad that everyone in the theater laughed when Alexander's fiancee died the second time. 

If you truly are bored one day and have nothing better to do, go see this at a matinee or wait until it comes out on video. Otherwise, avoid this like a time paradox. 

Adam Duckworth 3/11/2002