The Time Machine: Movie Review (2008)

Directed by Simon Wells, ritten by John Logan, based on the novella by H.G. Wells, 96 minutes, rated PG-13.

With director Simon Wells turning his great-grandfather H.G. Wells’ classic novella, “The Time Machine,” into a suped-up, much-delayed, $80 million spectacle for the big screen, one would think that keeping the book in the family would have been a good thing, a way to honor the family icon.

Shame that isn’t the case.

The film, from a script John Logan based in part on George Pal’s superior 1960 film of the same name, is one of those movies you go in to watch at 7 p.m. and eight hours later, you look at your watch to see it’s only 7:30 p.m.

It’s dreadful, a lumbering, long-winded gas bag filled with unintentional laughs and underwhelming special effects that’s about as exciting as--oh, I don’t know--tracing patterns in a carpet.

Set not in London but in turn-of-the-century New York City, one of many changes made from the original text, the film follows Guy Pearce as Alexander Hartdegen, a scrawny genius with a ratty mullet who loses the love of his life, Emma (Sienna Guillory), to tragedy just moments after asking her to marry him.

Four years later, Alexander, now somehow thinner yet with an even more outrageous mullet, has built himself a gleaming brass time machine, zipped back into the past and reconnected with Emma.

Initially, it’s a touching scene played for all it’s worth. But then another tragedy strikes this doe-eyed couple that’s so absurd and poorly handled, it had the audience at my screening first catching their breath—and then howling in laughter.

That’s pretty much how the rest of this movie goes. After brief trips to the years 2030 and 2037, during which Alexander witnesses the colonization of the moon and then its eventual destruction as parts of it collide into the skyscrapers of New York City (allegedly the reason the film was delayed in theaters), pop star Samantha Mumba shows up as an Eloi in the year 800,000.

As Alexander quickly learns, the world is now a vastly different place, with the kind-hearted Elois and the evil Morlocks representing a split human race at vicious odds with each other.
One genuinely thrilling scene does evolve from this madness, but with Jeremy Irons wasted as Uber-Morlock, a villain whose blast of white hair, exposed spine and pale face suggests the actor isn’t opposed to camp, “The Time Machine” mostly sputters, grinding through the centuries without a clear purpose or intent—not even, apparently, to entertain.

Grade: D-


Trailer is below: