The Time Machine *** (2002, Guy Pearce, Yancey Arias, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Jones) – Classic Movie Review 662

Guy Pearce stars as haunted-looking Victorian scientist and inventor Alexander Hartdegen who, after his wife is killed, travels in his machine through time in search of her. Remaking the much-loved 1960 version by George Pal, The Time Machine, director Simon Wells’s 2002 adaptation of H G Wells’s classic sci-fi novel is reasonably entertaining and imaginative. It must be a labour of love for Simon Wells since he is H G Wells’s great-grandson.

Testing his time travel theories with a time machine of his own invention, he sets off and is hurtled past three world wars and into the year 802701. He doesn’t find the utopian world he’d hoped for, but instead a world at war comprised of the hunter and the hunted. Then he leads the peaceful, surface-dwelling Elois against their subterranean enemies the Morlocks.

This friendly, but somehow not always terribly exciting movie is patchy and a bit sluggish overall. But it offers good moments of high adventure, and a very handsome production, with imaginative production designs, a strong Klaus Badelt score and exciting cinematography by Donald McAlpine.

Holding it together, Pearce makes a fine, tormented hero, doing most of his own stunts, while Mark Addy makes a good David Philby in the style of Alan Young in the original film and Phyllida Law is fun as the housekeeper, Mrs Watchit. Incidentally, Alan Young has a cameo as a florist. When he picked out his costume, he found the same period shirt he wore in the 1960 film, complete with his name written on the collar.

Luckily, pop diva Samantha Mumba doesn’t have to do much in the way of acting as eloi girl Mara, but unfortunately Jeremy Irons is encouraged into a feast of over-acting in a small role as the finale as the pantomime villain, Uber-Morlock, while Orlando Jones is also an irritant as Vox. Production designer Oliver Scholl came up with the idea of a hologram for Vox, originally written as a robot.

They have credited the screenplay by David Duncan from the 1960 version by George Pal, but John Logan’s fairly intelligent and inventive screenplay for this movie bears little or no resemblance to it.

Alan Young died on May 19 2016, aged 96.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 662

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