“Mediocre Romp Through Time”

A faithful (if greatly abridged) adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel of the same name, Timeline is a fun, popcorn movie that entertains but doesn’t trick you into thinking that it’s a major blockbuster hit…because it’s not. It is, however, a great way to get lost in the past for two hours.

The story breaks down like this: a well-financed tech company (ITC) has discovered a way to send someone back in time. Professor Johnston is trapped in France in the year 1357, and it’s up to his son, Chris, and Chris’ history-buff companions to rescue the professor from a life in the past. To add tension and urgency to their quest, the team only has six hours to retrieve the professor before they are automatically returned to the present day. And, to make matters worse, the group arrives on the day of a massive battle between the English and French armies, and they’re trapped on the loosing side.

There’s no one area of Timeline that’s spectacular, but as a whole, the movie works quite well. The acting is decent, though most of the faces are unfamiliar, save for Paul Walker (2 Fast 2 Furious) and Neil McDonough (Minority Report). The historical costumes, sets and props all look authentic and the directing by Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon) is deft; though, the movie lags in a couple of places. The ending battle sequences are excellent, revealing the more visceral side of combat in the fourteenth century—the catapult shots and flaming arrow scenes were riveting.

If there’s a downside to Timeline, it’s the cursory character development and lack of scientific explanations with regard to the time machine. Granted, there isn’t enough time in a two hour movie to delve into every aspect of how the time machine was built and operates, but the fact that it does exist is treated in such a “by the way” manner that it diminishes its role in the movie and undermines the credibility of the movie as a whole.

In the novel, Crichton takes the time to give a point-by-point explanation of the machine and the science that governs it—the idea of faxing a copy of a person back in time is absolutely brilliant. In the movie, however, that concept is only hinted at and the writers, instead, have chosen to use a wormhole attuned to 1357 as the conduit for transportation to the past. Since the method of time travel is vague and confusing, it’s hard to buy into anything that happens in the past, and that’s the major problem with Timeline. With the complexity of the science involved and a larger ensemble of characters to develop, this is probably one Crichton novel that shouldn’t have been translated into a movie. I suppose time will tell.

Rating: 2 1/2

Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy, Sci-fi