The Time Machine (2002)

Starring Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Mark Addy, Orlando Jones, Jeremy Irons.
Directed by Simon Wells.
Written by John Logan.
Based on the screenplay by David Duncan, and the novel by H.G. Wells.
Distributed by Warner Bros. and DreamWorks SKG.
96 minutes.

LVJeff's Rating: 4/10

Head Scratcher

A science fiction movie that leaves you scratching your head is usually a good thing. Hopefully, it made you think, wonder, and question your normal assumptions about humanity. Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the way it baffled you, yet made you take a second look at what you thought of intelligence and knowledge; or last year's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and its investigation of love.

The fun of sci-fi comes not merely from this probing and questioning but also from the imaginative methods through which the investigating is done -- usually by using fantastic vehicles or visiting exotic lands. H.G. Wells's story, "The Time Machine," offers exactly those things. The fact that the vehicle could travel through time wasn't what was important -- it was just a device used to transport the story's hero to a new place, wherein he (and the reader) could learn lessons about man and society -- but it was indeed fun and offered many exciting possibilities. All too often, however, the wonder of the methods is mistaken as the only draw of the sci-fi story. Without the deeper meaning behind it all, science fiction loses its respectable weightiness.

The makers of the new movie version of The Time Machine have fallen in to that trap. This new movie is an eye-candy spectacular but it's seriously lacking in the meaning department. Instead, it seems to dangle a few minor "meanings" before the audience at various times, failing to have any cohesion.

For instance, our hero, Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce), travels through time to find that man has destroyed the moon through over-colonization. That sounds like a decent warning to the viewer about the nature of man's ambitions, but nothing else is made of this. Later, he encounters a race of beings who are repressed by another, stronger race of beings. The weaker people accept their positions in, literally, this food-chain, but our hero questions it. "Rising against oppression" sounds like a noble social theme, but this isn't thoroughly explored as well.

The one thread that does seem to make it through most of the movie suffers from the film's ultimate undoing -- its lack of concentration. Alexander builds the time machine in order to go back and prevent a personal tragedy. However, when he succeeds in preventing the original tragedy, it manifests itself later in a different form. "Why can't I change the past?", he asks. The movie's answer seems to simply be, "Don't look back, look forward." Or something. I'm really not quite sure, because by the time Alexander's question is ready to be answered, the movie starts to lose focus and devolve into relatively mindless action sequences.

The film all goes downhill after Jeremy Irons appears. He plays a character with an answer to Alexander's question. His answer makes sense from a logical standpoint, but seems to lack a more thoughtful subtext. Just when you're getting cozy wondering what exactly he's talking about, Alexander pulls a stunt that won't make you wonder about humanity, but will instead make you wonder what in the name of humanity was the ensuing scene for? From this point, The Time Machine sheds any pretenses of being a deeper movie and begins to scream, "I want to be a special effects movie with lots of action thrills!" Too bad. It had more promise if it stuck to its more interesting path.

The movie isn't helped by some minor stumbles along the way. The early tragedy scenes are awkwardly presented and somewhat laughable. Inevitable feelings of logic and reason within the viewers will have them questioning not issues of mankind, but how a mathemetician can be so athletic and how the English language could have survived 800,000 years. The same goes for the survival of the character that Orlando Jones plays. These things would have been excusable in a story that was meant to be used as a metaphor for a larger theme, but the problem is that the movie has no larger theme. That makes the whole thing irrelevant and illogical.

The saddest thing about The Time Machine is how badly it squashes its own promising potential. It will leave you scratching your head all right -- but for all the wrong reasons.

©Jeffrey Chen, Mar. 11, 2002

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