Pretty Good

A Surprisingly Unforgettable Movie!

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

I love time travel movies - although it's probably fairer to say I love the idea of time travel movies because I am usually frustrated at how they are so frequently poorly done. I don't expect the filmmakers to posit ground-breaking theorems that would realistically explain HOW time travel works, I just expect them to be logical and careful as they play in the arena. I was shocked I had missed this film - based as it is on the seminal Bradbury short story that explored (and coined) the butterfly effect of alterations in the past having repercussions in the future. But this film is a blandly soggy mess; seemingly the product of some serious over-development as a clever short story was forced into all the "hit film" boxes the producers could check off. Part Sci Fi, part Indiana Jones, part Jurassic Park; but what they left out of the equation were logic and intelligence. A little research turned up the production problems that resulted in the horrible digital effects (basically just pre-viz or old video game quality) so I won't trash them further (although in ANY world the actors painfully "fake-walking" in place while the green screen image scrolls behind them would be laughable) but the blatantly stupid way the whole butterfly effect is dealt with ("Time Waves will look cool!" someone must have said) and having first rate actors spew third rate dialogue does nothing but condemn the film to the heap of Time-Travel failures. I bet the director and actors wish they had a time machine so they could go back and reconsider their involvement with this.

The story is excellent and told quite well so you can follow along and let it absorb you as you get into it. Time travel is always a good subject because there is so many unknowns and different ways to travel through time each with different results, explanations and in this movie consequences. The premise is exciting. One little change in the past changes the course of the future. According to this movie, if we don't disturb the past, the right now (as I am writing this) is the reality. Change the past and this posting doesn't exist and even worse, something else exists in this reality we call now. Adding to that is you don't remember what happened if no one corrects the error making it intriguing as time travel can be. Enjoy also so fierce creatures that we simply do not have too much defense against and their will to live at all costs. The premise of time travel presented here is that it is used for entertainment purposes with government supervision. One wonders why it would not be used to update our history books but that is another movie and a different time travel now isn't it? Get a snack ready with a tasty drink and let this be the....

Why do I like cheesy sci-fi movies like this? OK, why did I like this one? Yes, of course, it didn't make sense -- but to be honest, I didn't care. It started off sensibly enough, but then as it progressed they just added more craziness. First the time waves. Then the killer jungle. Then the lizard-apes. Then the other flying and swimming dinosaurs. Wow. It didn't matter to me that the FX were not that great. They were good enough.It was so...over the top. I mean the fabric of time has been ripped, and yet we're still following eye-candy Travis bravely and stalwartly lead his group through it all. How on earth are they going to get the machine working again? They created the disaster of all disasters, but how on earth were they going to get out of it? For some reason, I wanted to know. And what was with the hysterical characters? "Don't blame me for this!" What on earth was Ben Kingsley doing in this movie. So many unanswered questions.

Now I do not mind low budget movies with bad scripts and bad special effects. They can be pretty funny. But this one is not a low budget. I really can not understand why they didn't pull the plug halfway the making of the movie seeing it was becoming...what was it becoming? A joke, a disaster? This movie is a bigger disaster than what is happening in the movie. You start hoping that it does come true and mankind is whipped out before it can make something like this. I truly admire Ray Bradbury, I read much of his work. He did the right thing, when the hunting party returned they found out something had changed, of course the people who stayed in the present didn't notice, only the time travelers). Then Ryan shoots Eckels for leaving the path (that is the sound of thunder). Now in Hollywood this story is too short so they had to make it a bit longer. They invented the time waves that gradually change everything and of course it does result in evil monsters.Now I can also start about the special effects, which are in most cases a joke but never mind. If you want to show how a good story can be turned into utter movie garbage, this will be a classic example