The Time Machine

Reviewed by:
Eric Alt

It’s kind of sad that the latest movie adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine—one of the most imaginative stories ever written—lacks any imagination at all. Rather than adapt from the source material, the director (who happens to be H.G.’s great-grandson) seems content to just re-adapt George Pal’s movie version from 1960. And not all that well, at that.

Sure, the special effects are decent and the story cooks (it runs about an hour and 40 minutes, but feels shorter), but it can’t hide the fact that there’s no thought put into anything. We’re talking about 800,000 years into the future—you can’t even comprehend how much time that is (imagine watching a Gilmore Girls marathon and you might have some idea). In the original story, our time-traveling hero discovers two new lifeforms, the kind Eloi and the predatory Morlocks. But they are only vaguely humanoid—they are not just humans in second-hand Last of the Mohicans costumes, which is what you get here. So, after 800,000 years, evolution manages to produce creatures like Morlocks, but doesn’t change humans at all? And they speak friggin’ English? This version of The Time Machine also borrows from the A.I. principle that computers, regardless of the fact that they’ve been buried under rubble for 800,000 years, still work perfectly. And still look like Orlando Jones. The final nail in the coffin is the (mercifully) brief appearance by Jeremy Irons as the “Über-Morlock,” a character (according to the press notes) that H.G. planned on putting into the original story but decided against. And now you can see how right he was. Like a deleted scene on a DVD, H.G. edited out this detail for a reason. The character makes no sense, and only appears long enough to give you an idea of what would happen if Marilyn Manson had been cast in Hellraiser.