Review: Timeline (2003)

TIMELINE

Reviewed by: Harvey S. Karten
Grade: C
Paramount Pictures
Directed by: Richard Donner
Written by: Jeff Maguire, George Nolfi novel by Michael Crichton
Cast: Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler, Billy
Connolly, Ethan Embry
Screened at: E-Walk, NYC, 11/20/03

   "The Gospel of John" and "The Passion of Christ" take us
back  two thousand years, "Master and Commander" two
hundred, "The Missing," positively currrent events with just 118
years.  Richard Donner's "Timeline" splits the difference,
transporting us six hundred fifty years back into the Middle
Ages.  Why all this interest in the past?  As one character in
"Timeline" states during the opening minutes, "The past is
where it's at.  The past tells us where we were and where we're
going."  Archeology trumps futurism.  Jeff Maguire and George
Nolfi adapt Michael Crichton's novel for the screen giving the
audience the impression that Crichton must have some Luddite
genes.  At the very least noting the casting of David Thewlis as
physicist Robert Doniger, a man with an eerie resemblance to
Bill Gates we might even get the impression that Crichton is
anti-Gates or at least convinced that computer science and
quantum physics do not hold the answers the way archeology
does.

   Crichton, like John Grisham, has made heaps more money in
writing than this graduate of Harvard Medical School could have
made in the profession he studied, even if he'd find someone to
pay his premiums for malpractice insurance.  With 100 million
sold copies under the belt, including such well-known fiction as
"Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda Strain," you'd trust that his
genius would be evoked by the cinematic version of his multi-
layered book, "Timeline."  Unfortunately, Richard Donner's
project, exploiting a castle made from scratch with a set design
in Quebec, may enjoy Caleb Deschanel's lush photography, but
the story, obviously scratching a good deal of the novel, is banal
and the many action scenes  simply clutter up the big screen
with redundance.   Anyone hoping to get an insight into 14th
century European history will find out nothing about the lives of
the peasants, and considering that the marvelous Billy Connolly
is given ample screen time, will be surprised at the complete
absence of humor and wit.

   Paul Walker, perhaps the handsomest young actor that
Hollywood currently offers, takes the principal role of Chris
Johnston, a fellow who has his heart set on the pretty Kate
Ericson (Frances O'Connor) but whose love is unrequited
because Kate is into archeology and Chris simply has little
interest in the past.  That's about to change, because Chris will
discover that no course at N.Y.U. can match the experience of
being an active participant in the life of the Dordogne Valley in
France during the month of April, 1357.  

   The experience begins when Chris's father, archeology
professor Johnston (Billy Connolly), takes a trip back in time in a
machine constructed by Robert Doniger (David Thewlis) and his
staff a gadget designed to transport three-dimensional objects
like faxes but which is now used to bear people through a worm
hole into the distant past.  Now a captive at a time that the
French and English are in the midst of a hundred years' war, he
writes a note asking for help to get back, which leads Chris,
Kate, archeologist Andre Marek (Gerard Butler) and others to
the past with the warning that they have exactly six hours to
effect the rescue before they can click  gadgets on their necks
to return.  When something goes wrong with the machine and
the visitors may be looking into an awfully short life span at the
swords and arrows of English and French knights, love gets a
chance to blossom amid the chaos that has been Europe's fate
for millennia.

   Credit must be given to the production team for shunning a
reliance on CGI and going with a real set for the actors to work
with.  Aside from the generic explosions, aided by a device
given by Prof. Johnston to his captors to blow up sections of
castle walls, there is more confusion than clarity in the
exposition of the story.  Are we supposed to root for the French,
since it's their land being plundered?  For the English, because
their survival helped them centuries later to support President
Bush's wars?  Character development is sparse, a couple of 
romances are slapped together, and there is an absence of the
kind of wit we enjoyed in Daniel Vigne's 1982 film "The Return
of Martin Guerre, about a 16th-century peasant who returns to
his wife and family a better person, and Jean-Marie Poire's
1993 work, "The Visitors," a time-travel saga of 12th century
knight and his dim squire who find themselves in the
contemporary French countryside.

Rated PG-13.  115 minutes.(c) 2003 by Harvey Karten at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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X-RT-RatingText: C