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List Price: $12.99 | | Label: Dreamworks Video
Salesrank: 5635
Released: July 23, 2002 |
| Our Price: $4.24 |
| Used Price: $1.97 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
A man invents a time machine that allows him to travel 800000 years into the future. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 05/24/2005 Starring: Guy Pearce Jeremy Irons Run time: 96 minutes Rating: Pg13 Director: Simon Wells
Description of The Time Machine:
While the 1960 version of The Time Machine remains a science fiction classic, this adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel benefits from a dazzling CGI facelift. Digital wizardry shows us the awesome splendor of eons passing in an eye blink, while Wells's heroic time traveler--played with appealing conviction by Memento's Guy Pearce--is given a stronger motivation for piloting his time machine 800,000 years into the future. Long after New York City has crumbled and the moon shattered by a nuclear accident, Pearce finds a new home with the peacefully primitive Eloi, after confronting the subterranean Morlocks (courtesy of Stan Winson's monster shop) and their evil overlord (Jeremy Irons in wicked, pigmentless makeup). Trading Wells's social commentary for pure adventure, director Simon Wells (the author's great-grandson) maintains the story's legacy of wonder, despite a few hokey embellishments. Catering to a younger audience, this Time Machine is fun without being particularly distinguished--a treat for the eyes, if not the brain. --Jeff Shannon
The Time Machine Reviews:
800,000 Years And No Fast Food Outlets? 
2009-12-11 - Time travel. Oh, the possibilities; the consequences. Which really pertains not at all to this Simon Wells adaptation of his great-grandfather's classic story. But because I thought the 1960 Rod Taylor original was totally lame, I had flatline expectations of the 2002 version of THE TIME MACHINE. And you know what? This one's lame, too, but much more fun to watch.
The main reason this version looks better is due to CGI done quite well. It certainly has nothing to do with a dull, wooden Guy Pearce as protagonist Alexander Hartdegen--an instructor consumed with gadgets and machinery and marathon math equations who builds a time machine to go back in time to save the violent death of his betrothed (Sienna Guillory). Yet once he realizes the futility of his intervention (his betrothed was going to die, one way or another, on that fateful night), he decides to explore the future--only to bang his head in 2037 because pieces of the moon are crashing into Earth and, quite unconscious mind you, flings himself some 800,000 years into the future. From there, we're treated to the customary confrontation between the Eloi and the Morlocks, interspersed with Orlando Jones as an informational hologram (really lame), a stunning Samantha Mumba (wolf howl), and a smug Jeremy Irons in white makeup and predictable villain mode. The fight Irons has with Pearce aboard the time machine is a howler, yet still fun to watch.
It's the special effects that save THE TIME MACHINE from DVD coaster status. They're crisp, clear, vivid, impressive, and wondrous to behold; plus the blended scenes ending--with Pearce and Mumba in one half of the shot exploring their new future while the other half depicts two characters in 1903 standing on the exact same spot speculating what's become of Professor Hartdegen--is a grand way to end the visuals. THE TIME MACHINE ultimately is silly and nonsensical, but the special effects at least make the nonsense palatable.
--D. Mikels, Author, The Reckoning
Wonderfully intelligent movie 
2009-11-23 - Ignore all the bad reviews and comments about this movie. If you are like me, looking for an intelligent movie instead of the mindless drivel that 99% of the movies available provide, this movie is wonderful. It has a delightful ending which is very thought provoking. I also went back and watched the old time machine movie and found it to be boring and out dated. This new time machine movie brings up new and profound time continuum concepts. It emphasizes how important it is for us to try to get a glimpse of the future in order to understand what direction we should take in life. It even comments on the difference between short term self interests as opposed to long term community service. I guess in our narcissistic society obsessed with instant gratification, such noble and thought provoking concepts just sail right on by. How far we have fallen.
Ancestor-defilement at its worst 
2009-09-16 - I would never have re-watched this film if not for a discussion series on Wells I was hosting but....the sacrifices we make. Simon Wells' film has even less to do with his great-grandfather's novel than the 1960 version, in fact changing the whole motivation of the main character so that he can even more readily dispense with any of the philosophizing and social theorizing that has helped to keep the novel still relevant and interesting today.
In this film, the setting has been moved from London to New York though it's still the Victorian '90s. Alexander Hartdegen (Guy Pearce) is a physics professor about to ask for young Emma's (Sienna Guillory) hand in marriage when she is killed by a mugger. In grief, he sets about inventing a time machine so that he can go back and save her. Wouldn't you? Four years later he's ready, but he quickly finds out that he can't change the past, as that would keep him from building the machine and that would be a paradox. Of course, the paradox of his machine appearing 4 years before it was built in his laboratory or the possibility of him running into himself are never dealt with at all, and this sets up the bad action/thriller pattern in place for the rest of the film: throw logic out the window and when something needs to happen just do it and hope the audience won't notice.
He quickly decides to go off into the future. No real reason why -- no discussions of mankind becoming noble and true, as there was in the novel -- nope, he just wants to get out of Dodge apparently. After a longish stop in 2030 where he meets a holographic librarian (Orlando Jones) and somehow glosses over the fact that he apparently died in 1903 - the year he left - and a short one in 2037 as he witnesses the moon break up (cue cool digital effects) he is knocked unconscious on his machine and stays in a daze while the world changes around him, until finally awakening in the year 802,701. Given that 36 minutes have passed by now out of the under 85 (leaving off end credits), you know the action's going to have to come fast and furious and the strangeness and wonder - that still excite this lover of the novel - are going to be in short supply.
Suffice it to say that he quickly meets the Eloi, the surface people, led (more or less) by Mara (Samantha Mumba) who is the only adult in the tribe to speak English which is learned by all of them as kids but forgotten by most; she's the teacher though and of course remembers it, can speak intelligibly and is able to lead Hartdegen eventually to the ruins of the library where, miraculously, the electronic librarian still works. But wait, there's a cog in the machinery! Alongside the wonderfully mixed-race Eloi (the sole interesting touch in the film) there's a race of dead-white monstrous super-ape-like thingies, the Morlocks, who are faster, stronger, and like to eat Eloi-flesh. The Eloi of course just accept that their old, feeble, and sometimes others just get taken away - despite being reasonably smart and sophisticated in this version (in the novel and the 1960 film the Eloi are quite feeble and it's not at all surprising that they can't or won't fight back). In short order Mara is captured and our hero has to venture down below where he meets the supreme Morlock, an idiotic conception who can read minds, is super-strong and controls the other Morlocks but who of course gets bested rather quickly by the monkey-faced Pearce/Hartdegen. He's played by Jeremy Irons who I will say seems to enjoy these kinds of cheesy things, at least he's having fun making his big paycheck and probably knows it's crap.
And here comes the best/worst part: after dispatching the leader by moving his machine forward in time while super-Morlock is hanging on outside of the machine's "sphere of safety" (my words, none of this is ever explained) and aging the Morlock to death in a few seconds, the time traveler comes back, frees Mara, and sets the machine to blow up, which it quickly does, turning all of the Morlocks underground to dust just as the protagonists reach the surface and safety. So, uh, he saves the day by basically blowing up his machine despite not, uh, really possibly knowing what the consequences would be. This, like virtually the whole of the rest of the film, is just thrown at us with no explanation, and now our hero is presumably left to start a new world with the (of course) beautiful and intelligent Mara, having in a few days forgotten all about his past.
Pearce is awful, looking like an ugly sad puppy through most of the film and never being remotely convincing as a man of science; Mumba is nice to look at but that's about it. Some of the art direction and sets are kind of cool, but in a very self-conscious way: look, isn't this awesome! Like the Eloi village, a bunch of weird shell-shaped structures on a cliff face that really don't seem feasible or likely. Not that much of anything in the film as a whole seems feasible or likely, for that matter. It's just, rush ahead, and hope nobody notices how stupid it all is. Well, I did.
Wow! Empty Case!
2009-09-03 - Wow ... I bought this movie from Amazon last year and I didn't open it till just now.
And when I opened it. My reaction was "wow". The case was empty. There was no DVD inside. And the package was new, unopened, completely wrapped, sticker and all ... Just no DVD inside. lol How funny is that?! All I could do is laugh.
And I can't return it either, because I'm well past the 30 day return policy.
I got Punk'D!
hahaha
Good Movie though. This 1 star review is for the rip off.
I Actually Liked this Movie 
2009-08-02 - Yes, Pal's version is a classic and you can't get a more rugged heroic type than a young Rod Taylor. But I actually like this movie. It has heart. Pierce's character is driven by more than a quest for science it is emotionally personal. Nice effects and a good action film. It isn't a classic, true. It's a popcorn picture. Sometimes people take these sort of things way too seriously. It's science fiction. There is NOTHING in science fiction literature that can stand alongside the great works of all time. So check your disbelief at the door and you'll be entertained.
