I went into this movie with absolutely no expectations, having not read the book or seen the original movie, and I left fairly disappointed. Because the beginning of the movie shows the potential a concept like this could have, and then the director just bows out and creates an unrealistic, dull action/adventure movie loaded with special effects. The first 45 minutes of the movie were engrossing, even compelling, and then the director had to go ruin it with a lame action/adventure storyline that many in the audience were snickering at. I don't think that was the director's intent.
It tells the story of Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce), who creates a time machine, in hopes of being able to go into the past and change it. His wife was killed on the night he proposed to her, and now he wants to go back in time and prevent that from happening. Unfortunately he couldn't change the past because once he was back in the past she again died, but in a different way. So he decides to go into the future to find an answer for this. He flashes forward to 2030 and he and the audience sees how much life has changed. At this point of the movie I was fully engrossed, amazed at the possibility of time travel. But then the movie takes a turn for the worse. He ends up 800,000 years in the future and finds the human race has been split into two: the helpless Eloi and the villianous Morlocks. From this point on, its a bunch of lame action sequences and a pretty uneventful ending. To be honest, I wasn't even paying attention when the main point of the movie was brought up; I had to go on an RT forum and ask.
The acting in the movie was pretty hollow and lifeless and even Guy Pearce couldn't save this movie. The dialogue in the movie was pretty horendous. Guy Pearce played his role too straight and serious and you just can't in a movie like this. He played the nerdy science-professor-turned-action hero, which was completely unbelieveable and almost laughable. His two love interests were pretty hollow and looked pretty awkward on the screen, at least pop-diva Samantha Mumba did.
The only thing that saved this movie from being a complete bomb was the amazing special effects. But Im tired of writers and directors exchanging plot and good storylines for special effects. The scenes where the professor would travel through time were incredible because the audience actually saw the world changing over time in front of their eyes. And the scene of New York in 2030 was also pretty breathtaking. The cinematography was gorgeous during the earlier scenes and also during the scenes of the Earth 800,000 years later. Overall, this was a visually-stunning movie.
This movie certainly had potential, and that's what makes it disappointing because the director snatched the potential away about 50 minutes into the movie, and traded it for an unintelligent, unrealistic action/adventure movie with some pretty horrible fight sequences. This movie reminded me of the "Planet of the Apes" remake in every possible way, right down to the lame-ass ending. Even though time-travel isn't believable, if you are going to make a movie about it, you need to make sure the movie makes the audience believe in it, but this movie just made the audience laugh, which Im pretty sure wasn't the intent. If you like movies where there is action, astonishing special-effects, but little plot or thought-value then this is the movie for you, but it certainly wasn't the movie for me.
** out of ****
