3 of 10
Cinematography by Donald McAlpine
Guy Pearce
Orlando Jones
Samantha Mumba
Jeremy Irons
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| The Time Machine 3 of 10 |
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| Directed by Simon Wells Cinematography by Donald McAlpine Guy Pearce Orlando Jones Samantha Mumba Jeremy Irons |
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| This movie was helmed by the great-grandson of H.G. Wells, whose previous claim to fame was the directing of several animated movies before this live-action attempt: Prince of Egypt, Fievel Goes West, and Balto, to name a few. It is scripted by John Logan, who wrote Gladiator. Plus, it has some really good actors in it who act really poorly: Pearce and Irons. And those are pretty much the only interesting things about the movie. Not good things; just interesting ones. For some reason, Logan decided that it would be a great idea to change Wells' story around completely, possibly in an effort to eliminate any deeper philosophical meaning and replace it with eye-candy. And he also decided to tack on a Hollywood ending (which is strange, since that typical ending was conspicuously absent from Gladiator). Basically, if you remove Wells' original ending, the story is pointless. His work is a cautionary tale; this one is a quasi-romance that takes place in the distant future. That's a bad switch. But even if that could be overcome, Guy Pearce is very underwhelming, and that's the first time I can ever remember saying something like that. Irons is a total throw-away character; it feels like most of his scenes ended up on the cutting-room floor, and, judging from the quality of the ones that made it into the film, that's probably a good thing. And the story just doesn't hold anyone's interest, which is too bad, since Wells' work is justifiably famous. Summing things up: Logan needs to stay non-Hollywood, Pearce and Irons need to pretend they were never in this film, and Simon needs to go back to cartoons. | ||||||