Director: Richard Donner
Release: 2003
Rating: PG-13
Timeline is based on the Michael Crichton novel of the same name. It stars
Paul Walker (Fast & Furious), Frances O’Connor (Mansfield Park and
The Importance of Being Earnest), Billy Connelly (Mrs. Brown),
and Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait), plus the guy who played The
Merovingian in the Matrix sequels.
Michael Crichton, whether you enjoy his books or not, has two things going for
him. First, in a style reminiscent of Steinbeck, Crichton crafts rich, visual
prose that moves quickly. Second, he packs his novels full of interesting
details and history; not enough to leave the reader numb (ala Clancy), but
enough to leave the reader feeling smarter. It is no wonder so many of his
novels end up in the theaters. Yet given source texts that read like someone
describing a film, one has to wonder why so many of his books end up as
mediocre-at-best movies.
While Timeline was not a craptacular mess like Congo, it was not a good
movie. The acting was unpolished, the cinematography unexceptional, the sets
looked cheap, and the costuming… well, let’s just say they must have found
the hoard of shiny armor and clean peasant clothes left over from First
Knight.
The story starts out at an archaeological dig in France, where a team of
researchers are excavating the site of an important battle from The Hundred
Years War. The sponsor of the dig, a mysterious company called ITC, supplies
them with information about the site: (ominous overtone) a little too much
information. Head archaeologist Professor Johnston is suspicious, and travels
to ITC’s headquarters to get answers. The next day one of his students finds a
note from Johnston saying, “Help me,” (Duhn duhn DAH!) on a six-hundred year
old manuscript. Soon an intrepid band of students are hurled through time and
space to 1357, accompanied by three ITC goons on a mission to rescue Prof.
Johnston.
The film follows the general outline of Crichton’s text, but discards much of
his detail. In the film, ITC is no longer run by a megalomaniacal
profit-driven Bill Gates figure, but by a researcher whose greatest moral
failure was experimenting on humans. The novel made much of the language and
cultural differences between medieval and modern Europe. But in the film,
everyone speaks perfect contemporary English. Except the French, who speak
textbook French and broken English. And where Crichton was very careful to
avoid obvious paradox, the film sees no problem juxtaposing mutually-exclusive
historical timelines.
The issue of historical paradoxes, I think, is an exemplar of the film’s
greatest failing: it is written with the assumption that the audience is
stupid. In historical timeline A, it will introduce an element from historical
timeline B. Never mind that the element from B cannot exist in timeline A: the
audience will be too stupid to notice. Even a lot of the dialog is written for
idiots:
“This is the prototype device.”
“The prototype? You mean that large machine we just passed is…”
“Yes, it is a larger version of this machine here.”
Thanks, guys. I always wondered what “prototype” meant. And the audience
probably won’t know what a trebuchet is, so I appreciate you yelling it out
(and providing a bright yellow subtitle of the word “trebuchet” — after all,
it was uttered by a French person) every time one was fired. It would appear
they spent a lot of money building the trebuchet, because they kept showing it.
And yelling out, “trebuchet.” And providing the subtitle.
As frustrating as these things were, the crowning insult had to be the death of
a minor character toward the end of a film. It is officially the lamest death
scene in cinematic history (the previous record-holder being the guy who was
crushed by a book case in Howards End). ITC’s chief physicist is killed by
bumping his head on a clothes rack.
These complaints aside, the film included enough of Crichton’s story to keep it
interesting. I’m a sucker for swords, Scottish brogues, and trebuchets, and
Timeline had all three in spades. It was clean, not too scary, moved pretty
fast, and all the lovey-dovey stuff was implied… in other words, the type of
movie I’d have watched over and over again when I was 12. In the end, it
wasn’t really a bad movie. It just wasn’t very good.