Timeline

Year: 2003
Director: Richard Donner
Writer: Written by Jeff Maguire / Based on the book by Michael Crichton
Starring: Paul Walker, Gerard Butler, Frances O'Conner and Billy Connolly
Details: 115 minutes / Paramount Pictures / Rated PG-13

At first glance, Timeline seems to be the perfect combination of confident storyline and world-class action directing. After all, these guys brought us Jurassic Park, and Superman respectively. What could be better? Michael Crichton and Richard Donner? Cool, right? Not really. What we get instead is simply a shadow of those movies, and even further, it's a shadow with Paul Walker front and center.

Everyone knows what I think of Paul Walker. Until he shows us that he can do something more than look pretty, he's on my very long "there are more worthy actors" shitlist. As an audience, we get our revenge though. After seeing Walker squint his eyes and false-emote at various ridiculous situations, we also have the extreme pleasure of seeing him don leather elf shoes and walk around as though nothing is wrong.

Here's the thing. Paul Walker's papa is an archaeologist who has been time traveling. He gets stuck in the past and must be rescued by the ragtag bunch of archaeologist and cultural experts that have been working on the dig with him. The team returns to 14th Century France, to Castlegard, where a war has been taking place between the English and the French. Here, Timeline features the whole, we're speaking English, but really we're speaking French approach. Or we're speaking English, and it's supposed to be old English, but it sounds more like we're from Manchester circa 1985 approach. That's not even the worst part though. Because of the fairly clean production values, it looks more like they escaped to a renaissance faire than sometime in the 16th century. There are no whores, no one coughing up their lungs, and every peasant looks as though they were freshly scrubbed in a babbling brook.

As they search for Paul Walker's father, the team goes around killing people, willy nilly, without thought if they are killing their forefathers or a future president, or perhaps Lindsay Lohan (damn them). So it's obvious that Timeline has plot holes the size of Paul Walker's large, empty head. And not to ruin anything, but someone discovers something at the beginning of the movie, that we learn later he had created in the past. How can you discover something you have not yet created? This movie is so silly in its logic that it passes no test of comprehensibility.

Worse though, no one can seem to keep a level head. They just run around and scream, as though that's exciting to watch. Even the best performance of the movie (by Gerard Butler) is marred by a romance so incomprehensible, that you wonder what kind of My Little Pony toys the writers were playing with when they decided to stuff it in there. A guy goes to the past and he gets pussy-whipped in literally, 4 hours time? Blah.

There's really nothing that great about Timeline. The dialogue is stilted, the acting is cheesy and the fight choreography looks like something out of a bad high school production of West Side Story. This is one of those movies that I wish would get lost somewhere in the space-time continuum.

Movie Grade: D

Video: 4 out of 5
It's a nice big scope picture that's manages to avoid challenging visuals. There are no seriously dark sections, and everything takes place outdoors.
Widescreen Anamorphic - 2.35:1

Audio: 3.5 out of 5
As action oriented as the movie is, the surround channels don't get too furious a workout. Nonetheless, where there is action, it sounds pretty good.
English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), French (Dolby Digital 5.1)

Extras: 3 out of 5
Luckily, there's plenty of behind the scenes footage and very little press-kit material. See Paul Walker have a joke played on him! See Richard Donner cry! See me roll my eyes! It's good stuff if you like the movie, but your probably won't. It's about an hour of material that briefly touches on the filming, costumes and effects.

Overall: 2 out of 5
It's not such a horrible movie that you'll be throwing up, but it's bad enough that you'll be laughing at it more than enjoying it, so no. Don't buy it.

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