Review
TIMELINE
Directed by Richard Donner
Opens Friday, November 28
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Remember 1999? That year gave us films such as The Matrix, Fight Club, Being John Malkovich, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Run Lola Run, The Blair Witch Project, Magnolia and American Beauty. Say what you will of these films, but they’ve all impacted the way movies are made and viewed and for that reason 1999 was a landmark year.
But if you want a chance to see the way films used to be – to remember the cheese and gravy of the past – all you’ve got to do is head down to the theatre for director Richard Donner’s first film in five years – Michael Crichton’s Timeline.
Forget flashy special effects, forget clever camera angles, forget flashbacks and forget any attempt at social commentary (a rarity, I admit, but a movement that is on the rise), Timeline is filmmaking as it used to be. It’s straightforward, silly, without purpose and it has no redeeming qualities – a popcorn film of the first order.
Donner, the director of the Lethal Weapon series constantly sets up his camera in one spot and lets it roll, creating a staging so stagnant it actually shocks our over-stimulated senses. It’s like watching an old episode of Kojak or the Six Million Dollar Man – both shows Donner directed – without the lollipop or the bionics. Timeline has none of the polish or gloss or intentional grittiness we’ve come to expect in today’s films. It’s television on a big budget and a giant screen.
Even the actors bring us back to the heady days of vacuous entertainment. Paul Walker (2 Fast 2 Furious) plays the requisite pretty boy to Frances O’Connor’s (A.I.) adventurous archeologist, and their clinging, cloying relationship is about as believable as Christopher Reeves’s genetically perfect Superman falling for Margot Kidder’s bony Lois Lane. It’s an obligatory love affair totally bereft of creativity or chemistry – very Richard Donner.
The fight scenes are equally straightforward and passionless. Big explosions, sweaty men fighting and a high body count are replacements for motivation and character development. Or, worse yet, they are character development – at least for modern-archeology-student-turned-medieval-knight André Marek (Gerard Butler).
Timeline is essentially a B movie with B actors and a formerly A-list director gone to seed. But here’s the surprise – it’s actually kind of fun.
Paul Walker is beautiful to look at and compelling in a dopey Keanu Reeves way. Gerard Butler has the makings of a real action star as he strides around sweating and firing arrows into nasty English soldiers. And the classic Crichton chase gives the audience something to cheer about from beginning to end.
If Timeline had been helmed by one of today’s creative directors it might have been something special – Michael Crichton’s next Jurassic Park – but, as it stands, Timeline is merely fun in spite of itself and its director. |
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