TIMELINE (2003) Worst time travel movie since Beastmaster 2 About halfway through Timeline, there's a moment which perfectly captures what's wrong with this dumbass movie. People from the present have travelled back to the fourteenth century on a rescue mission. Two of them - the relatively interesting ones - are marvelling at how things are and aren't exactly how they expected them, when a third butts in and reminds them that they have a rescue mission to attend to. As a viewer, I did not give anything resembling a shit about the rescue mission. The character needing rescuing is in the past for reasons I don't recall hearing, and the characters rescuing him are generally dull at best and absurdly stupid at worst. I'd rather see how things are and aren't exactly as the viewer expects them. For that matter, I'd also rather see the kind of problems that the title (vaguely) implies - that messing around with the past would probably cause bigger problems than the occasional hail of flaming arrows. Modern people travelling back to fourteenth-century France is ripe with possibilities for conflict, discovery, wonder, funky time travel paradoxes...lots of things. But a bunch of chase scenes and sneaking around? Come on, I could rent The Mod Squad for that. No, the only thing these people find in the past that's worth sticking around for is a siege scene where fireballs are hurled by trebuchet. Everything else this movie offers in its ill-conceived vision of the past (where everybody speaks modern English, has good teeth, and produce no smells which are even noticed by modern noses), can be found more plentifully and more satisfyingly in any number of period films. Billy Connolly plays that man who needs rescuing. He's an archaeology professor who travels back in time through a machine created by his corporate benefactor. (cue Trek-style babble explaining how it works) Stranded, he leaves a plea for help in the past and, hundreds of years after he presumably dies, his son (the unbelievably dull Paul Walker, who almost out-Keanus Keanu), and a couple of archaeology students are drafted to go back and bring him back. Tagging along is a trio of goons looking out for the company's interests, headed by Neal McDonough in the kind of role John C. McGinley used to get. They each have necklaces with a red digital readout counting down from six hours - the amount of time until the necklaces aren't good anymore. These are used to transport them back to the present, though they need a wide open space in which to do it, a "rule" of time travel which serves no apparent purpose other than to prevent them from returning as soon as they find the professor (who's indoors). So they get to a wide open space and even then, they malfunction, begging the question of why the contrivance of a countdown is necessary at all. In one of the most stupid plot twists I've ever seen, the first person to return is one of the goons, with a pin-pulled grenade he wasn't supposed to bring back (much less use within seconds of arriving), destroying the machine. If I was going to bring back some forbidden modern technology, I'd bring something less likely to kill me. Incredibly, an American (Walker) plays Connolly's son, while Gerard Butler - who is only slightly less Scottish than Groundskeeper Willie - plays another, unrelated archaeology student. Butler is actually pretty charismatic in his role, as a romantic who seems born to be sent back into the past (he knows swordfighting...and brings his sword to digs!). The plot is predictable and obvious - labored, out-of-nowhere references to a couple in a sarcophagus and the turning point in a historic siege should clue in any mildly seasoned sci-fi fan well enough to figure out the rest of the story on his own. I did sort of expect that the villain would make the mistake of standing over his prey and slooowly raising his weapon for the kill, but I didn't expect that he'd do it twice - wait, three times yes THREE TIMES. The dialogue is worse, maybe - like in one scene, where the otherwise good Butler tries flirting with a French lady, leading to the linguistic confusion over English expressions like "Are you WITH anyone?" and "Are you SEEING anyone?" Anyone who laughs at the answers he gets is directed to rent a copy of They Still Call Me Bruce. Timeline spreads itself way too thin over its genres, which might have been easy to do with a shorter movie but it's two hours long! The romance and corporate intrigue are barely there at all, the pseudoscience is dumb and should have even the most casual fans picking out the holes, the swashbuckler villains are boring and nowhere near dastardly enough...basically all we've got left are the trebuchet. The time travel aspect of this movie almost seems like an arbitrary afterthought. Nobody needed to be from the present day to tell the majority of the story this movie tells. I haven't read the Michael Crichton novel this movie is based on, but I'm pretty confident that he probably put some thought into making a time-travel story...few people can heap on the science lectures like Crichton can. Directed by the once-impressive Richard Donner, his first movie since Lethal Weapon 4. Most of the things Timeline tries for and fails at, Donner has pulled off perfectly well in previous movies, but they were all a really long time ago. BACK TO THE T's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE