And even quicker to the $2 rack.
You would think a film titled The Time Machine would make more use of – and give more importance to – some sort of time machine. You’d be wrong.
Alex (Guy Pearce) is an academic besotted by two things; his latest investigation and his fiancé. When the latter is taken from him in unfortunate circumstances, Alex becomes a creepy shut in and focuses solely on his other passion. The result is a brand spanking new time machine, which Alex immediately utilises to subvert history and avoid his partner’s death. But fate doesn’t take too kindly to being bested.
At some point in the Time Machine you realise that it’s been running for 40 minutes and you’re still waiting for it to start. Even when Alex manages to find himself in the distant future in a peaceful and hippyish land full of human Avatar types it still feels like lightweight filler. Regrettably it’s apparently the main plot.
Once the dessicated monkey-skull guys show up it seems Alex suddenly has a purpose, something to do with a shapely young lady named Mara (Samantha Mumba) and a Raiden looking guy (poor old Jeremy Irons), but this has as much to do with a Time Machine as John Carter did.
The rest of the film seems expensive but half finished, like they threw wads of cash at a crappy script and assumed it would fix things. Even the finale devolves into an out of place action sequence, some explosions and fireworks to try to fool you into thinking the prior eighty minutes wasn’t just a dreary bore.
I feel bad for Guy Pearce, especially if he thought this might be the film to make him an action hero. It didn’t of course, but I still bet he wish he had his own Time Machine to stop this one from getting made in the first place.
Final Rating – 5 / 10. The poster makes claims that moving ahead in time should be exciting, if this is the result I fear greatly for the future.
