Review Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002

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I wish I were a pitch writer for movies. I have a few that I'd offer up for this one... The Time Machine: The Land That [You Wish] Time Forgot! The Time Machine: It's Your Time; Let Us Waste It! The Time Machine: Trashing A Good Actor's Career In Triple Speed! The Time Machine: Bet You Wish You Were Watching Memento Now, Huh? THE STORY (WARNING: **spoilers contained below**) Professor Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) has a beautiful mind that he doesn't wish to be wasted under a conforming bowler hat. Hartdegen, a scientist and inventor, Thinks Different, and is surprised that the rest of the world doesn't move to his rapid pace. His pace is so rapid, in fact, that he almost forgets to pop the question to his girlfriend Emma (Sienna Guillory). But wouldn't you know it: Tragedy Ensues, plunging Hartdegen into a four-year funk from which not even his best friend and colleague Dr. Philby (Mark Addy) or his housekeeper, Mrs. Watchit (Phyllida Law), can rouse him. Hartdegen builds a time machine so that he can change the events of the recent past, but somehow concludes that his answer lies elsewhere, prompting him to go back to the future: the way-ether time of 800,000+AD. There, he meets Raquel Welch...I mean, Mara (Samantha Mumba), mouthpiece for the Peaceful Enoi tribe of creatures who haven't really evolved much in the 800,000+ years since his time. And where there's a Peaceful tribe, there's gotta be a dark side, right? Riiiiight. THE UPSHOT You ever go out to see a new flick, and wish you had just gone to Blockbuster instead? If you're anything like me, The Time Machine will make you wish just that. Time After Time - the much better, though only slightly related - version of H.G. Wells' time-travel story, kept popping in my head after Hartdegen landed in the way-ether time of 800,000+AD. I found Time After Time much more enjoyable than The Time Machine, even though the first movie steered far clear of pere Wells' Morlocks and Enoi. Maybe even because the first movie steered far clear of them. The Time Machine started out fine, lulling the viewer into an accepting state with its sad (at first) story of a lost soul and decent (at first) CG and special effects. Had it spent most of its time in the past and the near-future, telling us more about what made Hartdegen tick, I might have found this movie a pleasant, non-threatening diversion. But my head started to spin as I watched the veil get slowly drawn back, asking me to accept inanity after patronizing inanity, with plot holes big enough to drive a Humvee through. H.G.'s great-grandson Simon's vision of the future got progressively more silly, culminating in the laughingly doofiest SuperBad Tough Guy (Jeremy Irons) since John Travolta in Battlefield: Earth - and it still managed to get worse from there, as if it was in a contest to see just how bad a movie can evolve into before the closing credits. As the Neo-Primitives, Samantha Mumba (Alexander's probable New Squeeze, Mara), her real-life brother Omero (Mara's brother Kalen) and the other Peaceful Eloi tribe, reminded me of that Star Trek episode where Kirk comes down and saves its version of backwards natives from a mean ol' Godzilla-looking stone statue demigod. By the looks of things, Simon Wells watched that episode, too. Poor Simon; I guess 96 minutes just wasn't enough time for him to include Pretty Pictures and a coherent story. I felt the most sorry for Guy Pearce; after he and his brilliantly mind-bending Memento were so badly robbed at Oscar® nominations time, I was hoping that the next movie I'd see him in would set the screen a'fire. Alas, it was this movie that most deserved to go up in a blaze. I guess there's one consolation: at least Orlando Jones (A.I. Vox) didn't play the customary Clown. Small comfort, though, when the movie around him was a joke. BAMMER'S BOTTOM LINE I wish I could go back in time and erase any memory I have of watching this goofy flick. Next time I get a hankerin' for some H.G. Wells, I think I'll head for the video store and rent Time After Time instead. Where's Cyndi Lauper when you need her? THE TIME MACHINE:   back to top And that's the way I see it. Rose "Bams" Cooper 3BlackChicks Review™ Copyright Rose Cooper, 2002 EMAIL: bams@3blackchicks.com    ICQ: 7760005 http://www.3blackchicks.com/