Review of Timeline (2014) by J D — 03 Sep 2008

As an adventure film, it's so-so. As an adaptation of a very interesting Michael Crichton book, it's pretty wretched. The concepts in Crichton's book made time travel seem very plausible, and the initial set-up as the archaeology team slowly discover exactly what happened to the professor gave me some "that is so cool!"-style goosebumps.

But the filmmakers scrap all of that intrigue and dumb down both the concept, the characterization, and the dialogue to the point that I'm amazed Crichton signed off on this. It's not like the guy's hurtin' for money.

In the right hands, while this might not have been the next "Jurassic Park", it at least wouldn't have been the next "Congo" (another decent Crichton story that didn't survive the trip from page to screen).

There was too much going on in the novel to cram this into a two-hour movie. Crichton would have been better off talking HBO, Showtime, hell, even the Sci-Fi channel to make this into a miniseries so that the coolest concepts, like the idea of alternate dimensions and the fact that the difference in English now and in the 1300's would have made conversation nearly impossible between two "English speakers" or that a company would use time travel as a new way to define hostile takeovers, wouldn't have been sacrificed to make a ho-hum actioner.

Here's hoping "The Time Traveler's Wife" will fare better in the time-travel genre. . .