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Timeline (Widescreen Edition)Rating:
Release Date: 13 April, 2004 Retail Price: $12.98 OUR Price: $9.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
Timeline (Widescreen Edition) Reviews
Not worth your time
I was unfortunate enough to have stumbled across this in 2004. I was thinking it would be a good sit down and watch type of movie, but it was really lackluster.
The acting is wooden, the script is very lame, and worst of all, the action isn't very exciting. I expected a much better movie from director Richard Donner. There is a battle scene, and there are action scenes, but they just aren't exciting. When the action isn't exciting, you better have a good story. The story here is alright, but certainly not enough to save the movie.
I don't hate any of the actors, they are decent when they have something to work with. Here they had nothing to work with, so they obviously didn't do too well this time.
This really isn't worth your time. I gave this to the thrift shop after I got it, and I feel sorry for the person who bought it there.
The climactic battle in the end salvages this film from the awful pile
I've never read the Michael Crichton novel this film was adapted from. All I've heard from fans of the book was that the adaptation directed by Richard Donner from a Jerry Maguire screenplay was just god awful. I would have to agree with them to a point. Timeline was very bad from beginning until the final half hour where a climactic siege battle between the British and the French saves the film from the awful pile.
Timeline's premise of time-travel by way of some sort of "faxing" through a fixed wormhole sounds interesting enough. The theme of 20th-century people in the medieval France of the 14th-century also adds to the interesting story that supposed to have made Crichton's novel such a great read. But even having not read the book I thought the film was bad. The theme of strangers in a strange land was never fully explored and it seemed that each action sequence were there to only serve to keep the film from spiraling down into pure boredom. It didn't help that half of the main characters were wrongly cast. Paul Walker just didn't seem to belong in the film with his one-note performance as a surfer dude when he was suppose to be some sort of archaeology expert. Then add to that his love interest in the form of Frances O'Connor and things just get worse. The acting performances in the flm is salvaged by the work of Gerard Butler as Andre Marek whose chemistry with 14th-century French Lady Claire seemed very genuine. I think the film would've improved dramatically if they just concentrated on those two characters.
Timeline does have one redeeming moment in its entire running time and that would be the battle in the end of the film. The French knights and men-at-arms besieging then storming the English fortification was genuinely action-filled. The technology and tactics used during the battle looked accurate enough to show just how brutal medieval warfare really was. From flaming arrows, night arrows and trebuchets with burning pitch, Timeline actually became entertaining.
But a half hour of entertainment preceded by more than an hour of pure nonsense and boredom could only keep Timeline from becoming one of the true awful films of the last ten years. Maybe things would've been different if the screenplay followed abit more of the complexities of the book. Maybe if the casting of Paul Walker and Frances O'Connor never occurred and other more talented individuals would've raised the level of the film's overall quality. As a piece of mindless fun (well the final half hour at least), one can't do any worse with Timelines, but for fans of the book and more well-crafted filmmaking they should probably skip this film and seek entertainment somewhere else.
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