The Time Machine
Reviewed by Edward Larsen Terkelsen

USA, PG-13, 96 m, 2002
Directed by Simon Wells. Stars Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Sienna Guillory, et al.

I found Simon Wells’ cinematic update of his great-grandfather’s classic tome The Time Machine to be a perfectly diverting ride, but the acrid denunciation its been receiving in the press leaves me wondering once again if I’m out of sync with my fellow critics as to what constitutes a worthy picture. I, for one, appreciate it when a filmed adaptation doesn’t trail after its literary source, but most professional faultfinders can’t seem to wrap their mind around how The Time Machine could break so audaciously from the story laid out in H.G. Wells’ book. (For God’s sake, isn’t there one reviewer out there who could’ve resisted from making that doltish crack about how the film’s director didn’t inherit his great-grandpappy’s creative genes?) Those who decry Simon Wells’ reworking of H.G.’s holy text for the sake of cinematic legibility must not have seen George Pal’s 1960 The Time Machine, an unashamedly goofy kiddy matinee from which this 2002 version derives its true inspiration. But appealing to the pundits to get their facts straight is akin to asking the sun not to rise. With all the film criticism available on the Internet these days, you’d think there would at least be some variety of opinion, but the lion’s share of the hundred or so links to external reviews for The Time Machine on the Internet Movie Database seem to parrot the same sentiment: “waste no time,” “blinded without science,” blah blah blah. I’ve come to expect this variety of dull-witted yammering from Roger “the Thumb” Ebert, but aren’t there any writers out there in cyberspace with the balls to rally behind a picture that their contemporaries are unfairly beating down? Am I the only voice of dissention left? I’m pretty confident, though, that if I were to propel myself into the future, say, 800,000 years, I’d find a host of cineastes reevaluating this damn fine undertaking. But as of this writing, such prophecies are of minor solace for I’m still sitting here utterly alone in my endorsement of The Time Machine. 

Forget the clunky 1960 version; this new take on The Time Machine touts ingenious special effects, but more importantly, the filmmakers have added a romantic element that helps it to resonate with audiences on a more emotional level. Though the early-1900s time frame has been kept intact, the book’s opening passages have been moved from London to the wintry environs of New York City, and the once nameless hero has been assigned the moniker of Dr. Alexander Hartdegen. Played with stern concentration by Guy Pearce, Alex is a physics professor who’s developing a hypothesis (often in concert via correspondence with some guy named Einstein) about the feasibility of time travel. When his fiancée, Emma, is killed during a mugging in Washington Square Park, Alex spends the next four years desperately building a time-trekking device that will enable to turn back the clock and save his bride-to-be. You’ll probably blink when you first see the actress who portrays Emma; newcomer Sienna Guillory looks so much like a young Jessica Lange that I actually found myself wondering if the moviemakers had employed the legendary actress and then digitally shaved twenty-five years off her countenance. (You can imagine my further astonishment when she seemed to be gradually morphing into Patricia Arquette.)  It’s easy enough to appreciate Alex’s obsession in finding a way to reunite with his girlfriend, but when his attempts to revise the past go horribly awry, resulting in Emma being killed yet again, he chucks the idea. But after grinding away day and night for a tetrad of calendars to find a way to modify history, it seems inconsistent that Alex would give up so easily. After all, being a learned man of science, Alex should know that one screwed-up journey into the past isn’t enough evidence to postulate a theory that one’s fate can’t be altered. Worse, by denying us a sequence in which Alex keeps racing back in time only to see his lover continually rubbed out in all manners of ghastliness, the director is passing over the opportunity to tell an enjoyably perverse joke. Think of it: the action could play out like a gory variation on Groundhog Day. But maybe we’re better off assuming that the protagonist can’t abide watching the love of his life perishing any more and just leave it at that. What he does do is catapult himself into the future to learn why, at least in his mind, the past doesn’t lend itself to being reshaped. This directs Alex to the year 2030, his first stop in what turns out to be an extraordinary pilgrimage. 

The look of the time machine—a big Barcalounger, fabricated from Dutch gold and glass, that becomes encircled with a shimmering blue orb when activated by what looks like a joystick—is a direct nod to the 1960’s movie, but it’s maiden voyage into the future is conversely awe-inspiring. The simulated time-lapsed photography shows us the hours accelerating with the sun arcing repeatedly across the sky, and spider webs and flowers gathering and then withering around Alex’s fluttering contraption. His laboratory is soon transformed into a warehouse full of dusty crates that are rapidly stacked up to the ceiling, and when he accidentally drops a locket with a picture of his beloved outside of the glowing sphere, he watches it erode from time and then eventually disappear. As he rockets farther into the future, we witness the change of fashions on mannequins in store windows and then the demolition of aged brownstones as modish structures are erected in their stead. As the city becomes more and more technologically advanced, the camera pulls up to reveal it in its entirety, its shape defined from the inky firmament by a web of twinkling lights. Incredibly, the camera keeps retreating until we can make out the contours of the US, and eventually the Earth, our view becoming obscured by the moon and an inquisitive spaceship.  

As he makes his way through the futuristic NYC, Alex stops into a public library where he implores the VOX system, a hologramic repository of all human knowledge, for an answer to his query about the past. The inorganic librarian (Orlando Jones) scoffs at the very notion of time travel, so Alex moves on to the year 2037. Upon arrival, he is greeted with the horrific sight of the moon being ripped asunder after being knocked out of its orbit. (The result of a failed attempt at human colonization.) Alex wisely elects to scram, but a bump on the noggin renders him unconscious, and his craft keeps moving ahead in time—through an ice age and subsequent tropical rebirth—until he winds up another 800,000 years into the future! There he finds that man has revolved into two warring species: the peaceful, earthy Eloi, and the predatory Morlocks. As designed by Sam Winston, the Morlocks are nasty—and I mean NASTY—beasties that dwell underground, but occasionally pop out of pits in the soil to munch on an occasional Eloi. Alex develops a taste for one of the Eloi, too; namely the beautiful widow Mara (Samantha Mumba), but rest assured that his hunger is for romantic nourishment. Despite its lack of modern-day creature comforts, Alex decides to stay in this time frame, and eventually wins Mara’s affection when he becomes a surrogate father to her son. Well, that’s all very nice, but the fun of The Time Machine up until this point was watching Alex hop hither and yon throughout the centuries. When he plops into 802701 AD, the movie slows down and, Heaven help us, assumes the tone of Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes. What we get then are packs of Morlocks scampering through the dirt as they chase their shrieking prey, and then sailing through the air on stunt wires as they lunge in for the capture. When Alex finally descends into their drab subterraneous realm to rescue the captured Mara, we meet up with the picture’s greatest casting coup: Jeremy Irons as the Morlock head muckity-muck, Uber-Morlock, a chalk-skinned, longhaired freak who bears a striking resemblance to Edgar Winter. The admittedly exciting climax can’t live up to the brilliance of Wells’ proceeding time-traveling sequences, though, and we’re shocked to see the movie end as early as it does. But if my chief criticism of The Time Machine is that it runs too short, then I guess its later missteps are of little consequence. The film is a triumph because, unlike Pal’s interpretation or even the classic novel (both of which are referenced by the VOX system in this film), Simon Wells makes us feel as if we’re actually zipping through the ages and spying on events that the hands of time aren’t ready for us to be privy to.

July 23, 2002

© Copyright 2007 by Edward Larsen Terkelsen. All rights reserved.