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Another big summer smash & another disappointment. The Time Machine has been somewhat overshadowed
by the likes of Spiderman & Episode II which is a shame because the FX surpass Spiderman & the acting
is far more assured than the sometimes dodgy Attack of the Clones.
It starts off well: an off the wall, Xmasy Victorian London setting except
relocated to New York, where Guy Pearce camps it up as our intrepidly
luvved-up, bumbling inventor-type. But the course of true love never runs straight in these things &
his lady ends up flat on her back with a bullet in the chest & the distraught Pearce throws himself into
his work. Cue "Four Years Later" caption, Pearce's transformation into Jamiroquai & he's invented the
eponymous machine so he can go back & save his love. What he should have done is gone forward to 2002
& eeked out a living as a Jay Kay lookalike starting fights in bars as he soon discovers that the past
can't be altered. This is where the film gets interesting again,
as he sets off to make sense of it all in the future - where one suspects they'll
have numerous theories & applications which can unearth an answer to his dilemma... Except the story
doesn't really explain this or why he didn't persevere in saving his beau a la Groundhog Day.
Instead we are hurried onto the superficial wonders of
2024 & then a few decades later & eventually a few million years hence & Samantha Mumba: the Racquel
Welch of 8,000,000 years A.D.
Considering this is a kids film its strange that quantum physics & advanced evolutionary mathematics are
the kind of grounding you'll need to make any sense of it. There's no getting
away from the fact it looks great but the plot is atrociously
flippant with the facts & indeed the whole story. The originality brought to the time travel
arena is decidedly adult in origin & erudite in understanding while the action is bitty, soundbit &
has the attention span of a seven-year old.
It does offers some nice twists on a
familiar story: the cyclic rejuvination of life on earth, man's dangerously arrogant - neigh omnipotent - regard
to science & the eventual base ruthlessness of evolution for survival. But these elements only reveal
the buckled monstrosity of a film without a clue. The story sags under the weight of PG obsequiousness
crossed with adult issues: great advances & theoretical groundings in scientific knowledge form an unsure
framework on which to hang a fairytale of fantastic special FX. As Mark Kermode said of Spiderman, it would have
been a far better film if it had teased out it's darker side & aimed for a more adult audience. The Time Machine
is a carbon copy: it could've been a far more effective movie if only its sights were set older.
One actually suspects, from the haphazard storyline, that the film began life as a 15 or 18 feature
but was toned down in mid-production by executives with itchy feet to attract a larger dollar market.
The 90 minute PG cut moves so fast it removes all empathy
for the characters, the motivation for the entire plot is cast aside in the first
15 minutes, resulting in a dull, ridiculous & wasted conclusion. In this age of franchising it's equally
far-fetched to believe the producers didn't cash in on a Lost In Space style ending that at least
offers the faint hope of more to come than this...? Instead nothing. Bravery comes across as stupidity,
you don't care what happens to the characters & Jeremy Irons seems to have completely lost the plot
appearing in something as trashy & despairing as this - a mammoth step down from Dungeons & Dragons
if that's possible. One can only guess he's following in the footsteps of John Malkovich (Con Air), Willem
Dafoe (Spiderman), Ed Harris (paying off Pollock with a car advert) & Steven Berkoff (Beverly Hills
Cop, Rambo 2) who have needled out a niche of subversive
sponsorship acting as talent-for-hire to fund their own cottage industries on stage, screen &
beyond. But if the aforementioned can pick projects that aren't too detrimental to their careers
(Rambo 2 wasn't THAT bad!), why can't Irons? Only Pearce & Mumba emerge relatively unscathed from the
wreckage, one a decent first-timer, the other growing into a strong & impressive character actor.
The kiddie cut of Time Machine suffers for it's compromises. There are far better time
travel films out there & the fact that two which come to mind star Jean Claude Van Damme (Timecop)
& Kris Kristroffersen (Millenium) says it all really.
RATING: (c) Limer 2002
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The Time Machine (Cinema: June 2002)
