Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
Mr. Beaks is poised to name this one his favorite film of the last ten years, so how can Foywonder hate it so much? Let’s see...
Okay, first and foremost, I suspect there might be a few of you wondering where the hell my review of THE CAT IN THE HAT is. There isn’t going to be one. In the past 12 months I’ve sat through GIGLI, MY BOSS’S DAUGHTER, FROM JUSTIN TO KELLY and even PINOCCHIO last Christmas. Hey, even I have my limits and THE CAT IN THE HAT is where I draw the line. Every year for my regular web column I do a list of the 10 movies I didn’t pay to see in the past year as opposed to the usual 10 best or worst that everyone else does. Wanna take a wild guess what’s already guaranteed to be #1 on my list this year? Okay then. Even I have to draw the line somewhere but it wasn’t with TIMELINE, which opened the day before Thanksgiving so “Turkey Day” this year officially came one day early for me and make no doubt about it, TIMELINE is one hell of an half-baked turkey. TIMELINE is definitely a turkey deserving of being carved up so in the immortal words of Jennifer Lopez in GIGLI, “It’s turkey time. Gobble, Gobble.”
TIMELINE looks, sounds, and feels like the most expensive TBS Original Movie ever made. Everything about the production of TIMELINE reeks of a made-for-Superstation TBS movie. It just so happens that it’s a big budget Hollywood blockbuster based on a novel by uber author Michael Chrichton, directed by the usually reliable Richard Donner, and starring this generation’s Christopher Atkins, Paul Walker. Take away Chrichton and Donner, slash the budget, replace Paul Walker with Casper Van Dien, and toss in Marge Helgenberger or Mariel Hemmingway along with an ex-Melrose Place cast member or two and TIMELINE could easily pass for the latest opus from, as I put it, “the worst movie studio on television.” Just like a TBS Original movie, you’ll experience three things while watching TIMELINE: occasional tedium, plenty of unintentional laughter, and utter disbelief as to how unimaginative and unoriginal it all is.
As stated moments ago, TIMELINE is based on a novel by Michael Chrichton novel, a novel I’ve never read, and so I can only assume that it either really sucked or was just poorly translated to the screen. Richard Donner directed TIMELINE and considering the overall shoddiness of the movie I think I now understand exactly why Donner has been talking up doing another LETHAL WEAPON. Even he knows his career is about to take a hit with this turkey so it’s time to fall back on the guaranteed moneymaker.
But if Chrichton and Donner are the designer and captain of this Titanic then Paul Walker is the idiot standing on the bow of the ship yelling, “I’m the king of the world!” even as the ship sinks around him. However, Paul Walker is no Leo. In fact, Paul Walker is only good at playing one thing and that’s Paul Walker and TIMELINE doesn’t even allow Paul Walker to be at his most Paul Walker-ish. This is not entirely the fault of Paul Walker since the script doesn’t give anyone any character development or decent dialogue for that matter. That still doesn’t change the fact that despite getting top billing, Paul Walker is playing a non-character and gives a non-performance to match. I dare say the producers could have saved themselves some money by just substituting a blonde haired, male mannequin for Walker and having someone else provide the voice in post-production. It certainly wouldn’t have made the movie any worse and probably would have made it more entertaining.
Then there’s Billy Connelly playing, brace yourself, Paul Walker’s dad. I’ll buy that for a dollar! The explanation is that Walker’s character has been raised in the US by his American mom. Considering that Walker doesn’t speak with even a hint of a Scottish accent or look even remotely like Billy Connelly I think this movie owed us at least one scene where we met mom. During an exchange between the two early in the movie, Walker tells Connelly something along the lines of “we’re nothing alike.” True words have never been spoken. But getting back to Connelly himself, the man seems to have been confused into thinking he was appearing in a Monty Python film or in one of Mike Myers “If it’s not Scottish it’s crap!” skits from Saturday Night Live because the man’s accent is in full throttle Scottish overdrive. Another character in the movie is also Scottish but his accent seems almost impotent compared to Connelly’s. He may not be playing a gay character but I assure you Billy Connelly is portraying a flaming Scotsman.
We begin in Castleguard, France where there’s a group of young archaeologists excavating the site of this famous castle siege that took place between the French and the British back in 1357, I believe. I’m fairly certain this “famous battle” is fictional otherwise someone at the History Channel may blow their brains out after watching this movie. Connelly is the group’s professor and Paul Walker is his son who really only agrees to come on these trips because he’s got the hots for one of his prize pupils, Kate, who herself is really keen on archaeology and vacuous pretty boys. The professor’s dig is being sponsored or something along those lines by a corporation called ITC and as we all know from watching too many movies, ALL CORPORATIONS ARE INHERENTLY EVIL! The professor keeps getting accurate excavation tips from the blokes at this ITC and decides to visit their headquarters to find out how they do it.
Walker couldn’t care less about and of this history crap so he gets a lecture on the wonders of past by Merrick, the other Scottish guy and only other character whose name I can remember. The two of them spend several minutes looking a stone carving of a man with one ear holding hands with a woman while speculating about who they may have been. Since one of the first rules of moviemaking is that you don’t spend this much time discussing something like this without it somehow coming into play later on in the picture then you can already smell where this is headed.
Here’s another problem the makers of TIMELINE don’t quite seem to comprehend. Archaeology is a fascinating subject matter but it is simply not cinematic. Unless the movie is about a swashbuckling, bullwhip-toting archaeologist named after an upper Mid-West state, archaeology is unto itself unexciting. Donner does not understand this so when the young archaeologists unearth the opening to some underground room the score suddenly changes to something more appropriate to an action sequence from one of the DIE HARD movies. It’s just a bunch of people running to a hole in the ground leading to two of them lowering themselves down into it but while this pulse pounding score tries desperately to make this seem like it has all the urgency of a life or death situation. This ranks right up there with movies like THE NET that try to make speed typing on a keyboard into something suspenseful. It just isn’t going to happen. The scene also marks the official beginning of the film’s idiocy.
So inside this newly unearthed room they discover things that will come into play during the film’s third act as well as a scroll and the lens from a pair of glasses, which is especially odd since glasses wouldn’t be invented for a couple hundred more years. Soon they will come to discover that the scroll contained a plea for help signed by the professor some 600 years earlier and the lens is a perfect match for the brand worn by the professor. Ethan Embry plays one of the archaeologists who looked to me like what Shaggy from Scooby Doo would look like if he were to give up his hippie ways and start shopping at Hot Topic. He essentially spends the entire scene running around like a chicken with his head cut off crowing about the carbon dating of the ink used proving that the note was actually written over 600 years earlier. When Walker suggests that perhaps dear old dad was playing a joke on everyone he’s instantly overruled by the others because the professor would never do such a thing. So these college educated people instantaneously believe the concept of the professor magically traveling back in time to the 14th century with no explanation whatsoever is far more plausible than a grown man playing a practical joke? Walker vows to get to the bottom of this by placing an angry phone call to ITC demanding to know the whereabouts of his father.
The next thing you know Walker, Merrick, Kate, Embry, and this French student, are flown to ITC’s top secret development headquarters where they learn that ITC has built a bigger, tackier version of Seth Brundle’s teleportation pods with the intent being to put Federal Express out of business. Alas, no one has had their DNA spliced with that of a fly’s but the teleportation “fax machine” has somehow locked onto a wormhole that leads directly to 1357 Castleguard and yes, they really do compare how this machine works to a fax machine. I for one was amused by the way TIMELINE handles its “scientific mumbo jumbo” scene. Most of the scientific stuff we the audience should know is spit out in rapid fire bursts of dialogue so that it just whizzes past you not giving you much a chance to think about what is being said. Unfortunately, they also do this when explaining important facts about the movie’s rules regarding time travel that will factor into the actual plot so a lot of what happens once they get to the past in regard to returning home won’t make a whole hell of a lot of sense. On the other hand, it may not have made a whole lot of sense anyway. I won’t even bother trying to explain or decipher any of this because then I’d probably consider blowing my own brains out.
So the professor knew something fishy was going on at ITC and after poking around long enough they finally relented and told him the truth leading to him taking a brief trip to the past where he got lost and is now trapped. The ITC guys want the group of young archaeologists to go back in time and use their knowledge of the era and the landscape to find the professor and bring him back. Even though Paul Walker has no particular skills or knowledge related to the field he gets to go too because it’s his father and he insisted and, most importantly, because he’s Paul Walker, dammit!
Okay, using this logic I am to assume that a quantum physics professor and UFO buff who knew the folks at Area 51 were up to something could poke around long enough that the scientists there would finally just invite him in, give him a grand tour, and let him take one of the flying saucers out for a test drive and if he got lost in space while joyriding in the UFO then scientists would just invite his students to Area 51 and immediately send them out in their own UFO to find the professor. Oh, and Paul Walker gets to go too because he’s Paul Walker, dammit!
Everyone in the group is rushed into wardrobe to change into something more appropriate to the time without being given much a chance to debate whether or not they even want to do this, not that it would have mattered since they don’t really bother to debate the situation. The voice of sanity here comes in the form of the Ethan Embry character who goes into overacting hyperdrive yelling about how he has no intention of allowing his cellular structure to be broken down and reassembled by some fancy shmancy “fax machine” and because he has enough common sense to know that a group of young archaeology students have no business whatsoever going on such a potentially dangerous mission. No one else in the group listens to him so he gets to stay behind. Paul Walker, Merrick, Kate, the French student, a reluctant ITC employee who has already done the time travel thing and isn’t all that fond of it, and two other ITC goons that happen to be ex-military will go.
The most important rule of time travel is that nothing modern can go back with them except for their markers. The markers are these little necklace like devices which feature a little LCD clock that tells them how much time they have before the marker becomes useless and it has a button on it that when pressed will return them home. The non-ex-military ITC guy going back with them insists that they must hurry so he’ll explain how they’re supposed to get back once they arrive in 1357. I don’t know about you but that’s the kind of thing I’d demand have explained to me in complete detail before I even agree to go on the mission.
As they step into the machine, the main ITC egghead tells them that they will experience a few seconds of extreme pain as their cellular structure is faxed to 14th century France. Our heroes barely even blink at this last second piece of information proving they are complete idiots. We also come to learn that there’s something this guy isn’t telling the group of young time travelers and another egghead briefly talk about the damage the machine does to people on the cellular level and that multiple time travel trips can prove fatal.
Since I didn’t mention it earlier, that is how the movie opens. An ITC time traveler was being chased by a sword-wielding knight on horseback when he pushed the button on the marker and for reason’s never explained ended up materializing on the side of a desert road. The police captain from the LETHAL WEAPON movies finds the dying man and takes him to the hospital where the reluctant ITC time traveler showed up to claim the body. The doctor said he died when his organs essentially fell apart of something like that. This was due to the flaw in the “fax machine” that doesn’t put everything back together perfectly so multiple trips can cause terminal cellular breakdown. This is a topic the scientists talk up quite a bit but I don’t know why since it never comes into play except in this gratuitous opening sequence. This isn’t the only sub-plot that gets brought up with nowhere to go. Maybe the original novel had it all amount to something but the movie just tosses stuff like this out there without any clue.
The real point here is to establish that one of the ITC eggheads is evil for no other reason than the movie needs some bad guys. Presto, here’s a cookie cutter, garden variety corporate “cover my ass” weasel type with the only difference being this one wears a pocket protector. After all, a major multi-million dollar corporation factors into the plot of the movie and so evil must be afoot!
It’s now time to get faxed through time and I assure you this movie’s time travel device redefines the term “smoke and mirrors.” They stand in a circle on this platform surrounded by thick, reflective planes of glass that open and close like blinds. After they close, it looks like somebody turned on the dry ice machine and then slowly cranked up the wind machine. Everyone opens their mouths real wide and makes a face like Edward Scissorhands is giving them a colonoscopy. The camera does an extreme close-up of someone’s face accompanied by the sound of screaming and a loud whooshing noise. Poof. They’ve traveled through time. Not quite as silly as the pod from TIMECOP but it still is one of cinema’s least impressive means of time travel.
Not since D&D: THE MOVIE has there been a less impressive group of adventurers.
Our highly unqualified and unprepared time travelers arrive in 14th century France and have just enough time for one of the ITC guys to spit out another rapid fire piece of dialogue about how the marker works before escapees from the Renaissance Fair kill the two ITC ex-military guys. Despite specific instructions about not taking anything modern one of the ex-military guys decided to bring a hand grenade back with him. As he dies he pulls the pin on the grenade and pushes the button on the marker causing him to travel back to the ITC lab just in time for the grenade to go off blowing up the “fax machine.”
Now remember, ITC needed these “specialists” to locate the professor “who could be anywhere.” It takes them all of 10 minutes to find the professor. They do so after they are captured by the English and taken to the movie’s main villain or should I say character that is supposed to pass as the main villain. The main baddie here is a hateful English…umm…I’m don’t recall what his title was or his name for that matter. All I know is that he was hateful and English and looked like Rufus Sewell if he were left in the dryer too long causing him to shrink. This guy didn’t ooze evil so much as he dripped being a prick. In TIMELINE, this guy qualifies as being the main villain but in any other movie he wouldn’t even make for a decent lackey for the main villain. Hell, if this were BRAVEHEART he’d have been tossed out the window. Still, he declares his hatred for the French by murdering the French student and shows his scorn for the Scottish by having the rest of the group locked upstairs in the attic with the professor. It turns out the only reason the professor hasn’t been killed is because he agreed to create “Greek Fire” for the hateful English…umm…guy.
Despite being hellbent to go back in time to save his dad, father and son never even share any intimate father and son moments. Like I said, the only reason Paul Walker got to go was because he’s Paul Walker, dammit!
The next hour or so of the movie is comprised of our heroes escaping and getting recaptured and escaping again while Merrick rescues and romances the sister of the leader of the French army planning to storm Castleguard and take it back from the English that very evening. Merrick and the professor manage to get recaptured – again – leaving Paul Walker and Kate to try and plot a rescue mission at a nearby monastery involving a secret tunnel that leads into the castle that she had been searching for back in the 21st century. Also, a whole new subplot is tossed out with little backstory or development regarding one of the hateful English…umm…guy’s right hand men who turns out to be a former ITC employee that got trapped in the 14th century and somehow weaseled his way into becoming a rising member in the English army. He kills the last surviving ITC guy because he was part of the mission that left him behind.
They also come to realize that something is wrong with their markers as the first attempt to return home doesn’t work. I come to realize that if they hadn’t added this contrived plot twist involving the grenade blowing up the machine the movie probably would have only been about 45 minutes long.
Okay, I’m leaving out a lot of details from this section of the movie but that’s because the majority of it is so mundane it’s unintentionally hilarious. The characters spend most of the time getting chased around by the English while doing a lot of running and hiding and climbing up and down things and sneaking around all the while uttering such idiotic dialogue like “let’s go,” “c’mon,” “yeah,” “no,” 146 different variations of “we’re running out of time,” and I’m positive that on at least during one occasion during a brief celebratory moment I head Paul Walker go “woo!” Even Bill and Ted had enough dignity to avoid going “woo!” Despite the sheer idiocy of it all Richard Donner dares to direct it with a sense of deadly seriousness that only succeeds in making these events all the more laughable. There’s one scene where Kate is climbing along a straw rooftop that goes on forever because director Donner actually thinks there’s some suspense to be mined from whether or not she’ll fall through or fall off or be seen by someone. There isn’t. Donner even goes as far to employ slasher movie-style jolts to shock the audience such as when an English knight pops up and suddenly you hear that noise that sounds like the score’s composer suddenly slammed his arm down on the keyboard. Now that’s a surefire sign of desperation on the director’s part.
Now all the while they are running around 14th century France and I’m fighting the urge to yell out “Huzzah!” in the theater, the ITC scientists scramble to repair the “fax machine” in less than six hours. Why just six hours? Because that’s how long the markers last until they expire. Why do the markers expire after only six hours? Damned if I know. The movie periodically jumps back to the future to keep us updated on the status of the time machine repairs and so that Ethan “Soul Patch” Embry can have something to do. Either he’s emphatically asking if they’ll be able to fix the machine in time or he’s emphatically demanding that they fix the machine in time. If his character had been female she would have been slapped for getting so hysterical. Seriously, I haven’t seen mugging for the camera like this since Andrew McCarthy in WEEKEND AT BERNIE’S 2.
So it’s time for the big finale as the French try to recapture the castle from the English. The professor and Merrick are forced to create “Greek Fire” and at no time is it ever explained how an archaeologist and a cultural anthropologist know how to make gunpowder that generates fire that grows larger when water is tossed on it out of basic 14th century powders and compounds. They succeed nonetheless. While doing so, the professor ponders the ramifications of doing this since it will be changing the course of history. This is especially funny considering they’ve already killed several English soldiers and seeing as how Homer Simpson and his time traveling toaster screwed up evolution by simply squishing a primordial fish then one can only imagine what these jokers might have done by killing people. What if they killed an ancestor of Ben Franklin or killed a guy whose lineage would eventually lead to the birth of the guy who developed the cure to some terrible disease? They’d be wiped out from history just because a couple of modern day idiots had to travel back in time to rescue the guy who replaced Howard Hesseman for the final season of Head of the Class! Hardly worth the risk if you ask me.
The catapults hurling flaming boulders at the castle and the archers firing flaming arrows is neat for about the first seconds but soon wears thin just like everything else in the movie. And to be perfectly honest, I’ve seen Jet Li’s recent Hong Kong movie HERO so it’s going to be a long, long time before the sky filling with arrows seems all that impressive again. If you’ve seen HERO then you know what I mean. Still, the far too brief PG-13 medieval castle siege is the high point of the movie.
While the castle storming goes on, the makers of TIMELINE have found the greatest use of Paul Walker ever in a motion picture – crawling through a hole with a torch and saying virtually nothing at all. If only all movies starring Paul Walker would stick him in an underground tunnel for the duration of the third act while the neat stuff happens. He’s down there with Kate and they’ve sent word to the head French guy that there’s a secret tunnel leading into the castle.
Back at the castle, Hateful English Guy™ reveals that he captured the sister of the Head French Guy™ and is threatening to have her hung unless he surrenders. This is woman Merrick has the hots for so he demands she be released or he’ll toss the torch he’s holding into the Greek Fire vat. Hateful English Guy™ says that if he does so it will kill everyone including the woman he has the hots for. Merrick does so anyway and it does indeed cause a massive explosion and one hell of a fireball yet it doesn’t seem to kill anyone.
Back underground, Head French Guy™ and some of his men are in the tunnel with Walker and Kate when it turns out that it’s a dead end. Walker and Kate pout and the French call them English spies whom have deceived them. Before the French can do the world a favor and gut Paul Walker, the massive explosion causes a whole to open up in the tunnel leading directly into the castle. Hip hip hooray! Someone flipped the plot contrivance switch!
Merrick sword fights and kills the evil ex-ITC employee/English henchman and gets his ear chopped off in the process causing him to realize that he and the French woman are the man and woman carved in stone from the beginning of the movie. If you didn’t see this coming then you probably also believe those emails about the International Bank of Nigeria wanting to share $18.5 million waiting with you if you’ll just send them a down payment first. Paul Walker and Head French Guy™ double team the Hateful English Guy™ and kill him. The French storm the castle and are in the process of taking it back when Walker, Kate, and the professor rush to an open field. Merrick, on the other hand, has decided to stay behind and get himself some 14th century French poontang.
Ah yes, the reason they have to run out to this open field is because another one of the convoluted rules to time travel in this movie is that there must be at least 40 yards or was it feet, I forget, of open space around them when they activate the markers or else… Or else… Uh, I don’t think they ever bothered to say why. Screw it! They just do.
Fortunately, the ITC scientists have repaired the machine although the evil ITC egghead doesn’t want to bring them back because he’s afraid word will leak out and negative publicity will ruin all they’ve worked for. He engages another ITC egghead in a sissy fight before inadvertently trapping himself in the machine just as the markers are activated. He gets teleported to the 14th century just in time to get decapitated (off-camera) by an English knight while Paul Walker, Kate, and Billy Connelly make those pained rectally violated by Captain Hook faces again as they return home. Ethan Embry finally comes down off his massive caffeine high and solemnly asks about what happened to Merrick and the French student. Before they tell him the truth which no doubt would have caused Ethan Embry to overact again by having a tearful Oscar moment, the movie cuts back to the excavation site some time later. Father and son and son’s girlfriend uncover the rest of that stone carving of the man and woman learning that its actually Merrick’s tomb and there’s a somewhat cryptic message written on the side telling of his wonderful life with his wife and kids back in the 14th century. The end. Seriously. That’s it. That’s how the movie ends. That’s actually the movie’s big payoff at the end. They read the inscription on the tomb and go “aaaahhhhhhh” before fading out to the closing credits.
TIMELINE is a movie that does for traveling through time what THE CORE did for venturing to the center of the Earth only TIMELINE is far more entertaining due to being so unintentionally funny. If you can watch this movie with a straight face then you must either be bored out of your mind by what you’re seeing or just incapable of appreciating pure schlock. Cheesy as hell and dumber than a bag of hammers, that’s TIMELINE for you.
Now that I’ve had my fill of Thanksgiving turkey I feel up for some desert. Forget the pumpkin pie, I’ve got a taste for HONEY.
The Foywonder (www.schlocktoberfest.com)
Also, before you start writing Beaks hate mail, forcing him to come to the Labs and kill me, let me fess up. I was just funnin’ you guys in the intro. It’s not his favorite film of the past ten years.
It’s just his favorite film THIS year.
"Moriarty" out.
