Friday, March 8, 2002 | 9:02 a.m.
"The Time Machine" is a remake of an adaptation. It is based on a short novel by H.G. Wells, but takes its cues, both visual and narrative, from the classic 1960 adaptation of the same material by George Pal.
The director of the remake, Simon Wells -- great-grandson of H.G. -- tips his cap whenever possible, whether through the changing hemlines in a dress shop or the apelike movement of the story's villains, the Morlocks. Everything has its antecedent.
Everything, that is, except the mistakes. Australian actor Guy Pearce, ideal in "Memento" and "L.A. Confidential," is well-suited to the role of time traveler Alexander Hartdegen (this version of the story gives the traveler a name for the first time), but he's undone by an unfortunate story choice.
Until now, the time traveler was motivated only by curiosity; by giving him an impetus in the death of his fiancee (Sienna Guillory), the new script makes his motives for heading forward in time seem suspect.
The unfortunate result is a film you're never quite able to connect with, though it is quite beautiful and exciting by turns. Wells the younger started out in animation, and his depiction of Hartdegen's journey into the future is visually impeccable.
Here we have the evolving dress shop and spinning watch hands, but also a breathtaking effects shot of skyscrapers sprouting from the ground, biplanes and jets passing each other in midair, and a web of city lights growing on the moon.
Pearce's character reacts to these wonders with pure indifference; they're not what he's journeyed to see. Finally, he ends up 800,000 years forward of where he began, in a society that has regressed to crude tools and treehouses. Two races live in close proximity, if not harmony: The peaceful Eloi, who look and dress like Native Americans, and the vile Morlocks, who look like actors in creature suits. The Morlocks eat the Eloi, who are more or less used to it. "It is the world," shrugs one.
Hartdegen won't have it, and later, the Morlocks abduct Mara (Samantha Mumba), the Eloi that found Hartdegen and Hartdegen's de facto tour guide. He consults with an archaic library program (Orlando Jones, funny and sharp), which leads him to the Morlocks' underground city. There he meets the head honcho, the Uber-Morlock, played by Jeremy Irons as the world's smartest progressive-rock guitarist with a long mane of white hair and exposed spine.
The look of "The Time Machine" makes it worth seeing -- at matinee prices, at least. But for all its grand notions and morals, very little of it sticks with you when you leave the theater. You have no sense of having completed a journey. Think of how you felt after seeing "Star Wars," "Blade Runner" and the like; they're not films as much as places to visit, and revisit.
"The Time Machine," by comparison, is almost as benign as the Universal Studios tour.
"You're plagued by two words: what if?" murmurs Irons' hard-rocking Morlock, shaking his head reproachfully. So am I, at that. What if the creators of this remake had taken the proven course? What if the fine Mark Addy, playing Hartdegen's friend Philby, had been given something better to do? What if the producers had left in scenes of moon rocks bombarding New York? What if H.G. Wells, in addition to predicting nuclear power and the like, had predicted the folly of using pre-release test audiences?
I guess there are some things man just wasn't meant to know.
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