Posted 23:01 by Grote 0 comments

Movie Review: Timeline

Timeline is a movie based on the superb book by Michael Crichton. Sadly that's where the parallels end. It's not a bad movie, but it's not exactly a "must rent" either. Our heroes go to see Bill Gates to go back in time to rescue their archeology professor/father (Actually only one of our heroes is the professor's son but that's neither here nor there). There's a lot of quiet arguing going on throughout the movie and it seems like the younger actors compete for screen time. The biggest problem with the movie is that there is no sense of time. In the movie they have 6 hours (31 less than the book's 37 hours) to rescue Billy Connolly's character and get home. They get there in the mid-afternoon and have time to get captured, escape, save the princess, get captured again, get involved in a night battle and get home. We only see how much time they have left before they are stuck there forever, maybe five times. The filmmaker's really dropped the ball on this one. I'm not saying have a "game clock" up in the corner of the movie like some NFL game but still give us some idea how much time is left to add tension to the story. What made the book better was there weren't chapter numbers but after they went back in time the chapters were labeled with how many hours:minutes:seconds were left to get home. Seriously, save your money or go see Master and Commander (which I hear is a really good movie).