MOVIE REVIEW

Timeline  (2003)

Starring: Paul Walker, Frances O'Connor, Gerard Butler
Director: Richard Donner

Rating: PG-13

Studio: Paramount

Release Date: 11.26.03

Review Posted: 11.26.03

Spoilers: None

By Sara M. Fetters

Flaccid "Timeline" Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go

The nice thing about being an actor, you get paid to play dress up. That doesn’t happen when you’re a kid. Nevertheless, you still put on your mother’s clothes and tramp around the house pretending you’re someone else, an adult living in a fantasy world based in your own imagination. Sure, as you get older those dress up games change a little bit; acting out a bit of “Star Wars” here, maybe a little “Lord of the Rings” there; but it’s all still a game in the end.

Unfortunately, that’s what director Richard Donner’s time travel adventure “Timeline” ultimately feels like - an extremely well financed game of dress up. The clothes are pretty, and the actors tromp around the countryside with aplomb, but there’s nothing underneath the surface, and not once do you suspect or feel there’s anything of importance going on. It’s all just a game, and even with my own fairy tale fantasies of being Princess Guinevere and meeting my very own dashing Lancelot reverberating in my memory, that isn’t enough to keep me interested in this muddled mess of a movie.

Based on the novel by “Jurassic Park” author Michael Crichton, the film is about a group of archaeological students; Kate (Frances O’Connor), André (Gerard Butler), François (Rossif Sutherland) and physicist David (Ethan Embry); who travel back in time to 14^th century France to save their professor Edward Johnson (Billy Connolly). Joining them is their teacher’s extroverted and impetuous son Chris (Paul Walker), as well as a crack trio of former Marines led by a nefarious company man named Kramer (Matt Craven).

Said company is run by one Robert Doniger (David Thewlis), and in his zeal to create new technology that would have the ability to “fax” three-dimensional objects around the globe, he and his crack team of scientists have inadvertently stumbled upon time travel. Instead of sending objects from the Pacific side of the U.S. to the Atlantic, Doniger instead can send them all the way back to medieval France, and when Prof. Johnson stumbles upon this secret he can’t wait to go back and experience history first hand. One problem; history isn’t exactly being hospitable, and now the gray-haired professor is stuck right in the midst of one of the largest, most bloody battles of the entire One-Hundred Year War.

If this explanation seems far too simple for a story based on Crichton book, don’t worry, it is. If anything, Donner’s movie does actually make me want to go and read the novel on which it is based, which is saying something, for I burned out on this author’s novels four or five years a go. But this one interests me. There’s a fascinating concept at the core of this tale. A hybrid of fantasy, science and science fiction, the story behind “Timeline” can’t help but intrigue.

Wish I could say the same about the movie. Jeff Maguire and George Nolfi’s screenplay comes across the screen like a distaff version of Cliff’s Notes, the simplest mechanics of the novel’s intricacies stripped away so as to not waste precious time getting to the picture’s massive 14^th century battle scenes. To his credit, Donner does the best he can, directing with furious aplomb, trying to ratchet up the tension splitting time between his band of trapped young time travelers and the present-day scientists frantically trying to fix their broken equipment before time to retrieve the travelers runs out. But I can’t help feel the director is repeating himself. He’s done the medieval thing already with “Ladyhawke,” and as that film ages like fine wine – I’m almost tempted to use the word classic – this one goes down like beer from last night’s kegger.

Let it be known that Donner also pulls a fast one on an audience expecting young “2 Fast 2 Furious” heartthrob Walker to be the big star. He’s not, and thank goodness for that, for Walker and the lovely O’Connor have about as much chemistry as my shoe and that piece of gum I stepped in last week. The blonde matinee idol is completely out of place, and from the hangdog look that sticks to his face like mustard on a stadium sausage, I got the feeling he knew it all through shooting. But, at least he gets to have one or two lines of intelligent dialogue. Poor O’Connor, so brilliant in films as diverse as “Mansfield Park” and “A.I.,” is stranded with lines so hackneyed and silly that even George Lucas would feel like an idiot writing them.

Thankfully, Donner turns the movie over to Butler, and the actor very nearly pulls of the neat trick of not only stealing “Timeline” from the other actors, but of saving the entire mess as well. His eyes pierce, his hair glistens, and he’s the only one that really looks like he’s ready to live, breath and die the 14^th century. In fact, the burgeoning romance (that’s literally love at first sight, mind you) between himself and the beautiful Anna Friel almost comes off as believable, making the actor’s late daring-do heroics in the heat of battle somewhat affecting.

Actually, these battle sequences do have a viscerally luminous charge to them. The great Caleb Deschanel paints the movie breathtakingly, the Oscar-nominated cinematographer – how did he not win for “Fly Away Home”? – turning each frame into a canvas of startling elegance. Flaming arrows cross through the night sky like shimmering slivers of light, bringing brutality and death in their effervescent wake. This is the type of movie where you want to turn up the volume on Brian Tyler’s thunderingly effective score while turning it down on everything else, letting the gracefulness of Deschanel’s imagery shine through without having to be burdened by the timorous disjointedness of all the rest.

To the director’s credit, “Timeline” is never boring, but it’s never particularly interesting either. Donner isn’t afraid to go for the throat, a brutal killing of what at first seems a major character is shockingly effective, and that lends the film an authority most big budget action spectaculars never seem to muster. And, even more surprisingly, this is the first American film made during all the recent unpleasantness that makes the French the majestic heroes and the British the brutish villains. A part of me just loves that.

But when all is said and done, all I kept thinking about was how nice it must have been for the actor’s to get paid for playing childhood dress up games. While the sets and effects and scenery are most impressive, the clothes look like they came right out of a downtown rental agency specializing in medieval haute couture. Well, I guess it is better than wearing my grandmother’s hand-me-downs.

Rating: êê  (out of 4)

TOP