Film #134 - Timeline (2003)
Viewed May 14, 2006
I only decided to watch Timeline because I had recently finished listening to the book on tape and was interested in how they would adapt it. Unfortunately, they did everything one expects from Hollywood, and that’s not a good thing.
The story revolves around a group of archaeologists who get sucked into a large corporation’s time travel scheme. When the Professor leading the expedition is lost in the long ago past, several of his students must go back to try and retrieve him.
One of the things that I liked about Timeline the novel, was that it followed very few of the standard clichés for this type of story. It’s characters didn’t fall into standard types, there were no characters brought along just to kill them off, and the “damsel in distress” has more to her than most of the other characters. The film reverts almost all of these things into their Hollywood archtypes.
The first change is in the characters. Chris (Paul Welker), the least experienced of the archaeologists in the novel, is turned into the Professor’s son, who hasn’t followed in his father’s footsteps due to issues with his parents’ divorce. (Cliché #1) They add two extra people to the expedition, including one who is terrified to go, but is talked into it. Naturally, he dies almost immediately. (Cliché #2) The Lady Claire (Anna Friel) is a complex character in the book, playing all the various characters off each other for her own benefit, despite a basically good core. In the film she does little but get kidnapped and rescued over and over. (Cliché #3)
But even without these changes and standard issue plot devices, Timeline is an unfortunately bland action adventure film. Director Richard Donner (who should understand this format better) never allows his characters a chance to break free from the constraints of the script. His action sequences are good, but tend towards being overblown and some of the fights are muddy.
As far as the cast is concerned, only Gerard Butler as André Marek (the one who dreams of living in the past) comes off very strongly. He is helped by the fact that he is given a lot of action originally given to other characters, but even he is a bit too simplistic and straightforward. The rest of the cast give decent, but unmemorable performances.
I don’t expect films based on books to be identical to their literary counterparts. I expect a certain amount of changes to fit the medium and to be fair to the filmmakers, they do fix what I thought was a pretty lousy ending to the book. But the rest of the changes are without the slightest bit of originality and rob the story of what made it work in the first place.