 Movie
Reviews
with Evelyn Gough
The Time Machine
Directed by Simon Wells
 Guy Pearce stars as time traveler Alexander Hartdegen.
Everybody has favourite films from their childhood - films so imaginative and fantastic they left a lasting impression. Two that impacted on my young impressionable mind have become science fiction classics and decades later the original Planet Of The Apes and the 1960 version of HG Wells' Time Machine, starring Rod Taylor, remain proof that all the computerised special effects in the world are no substitute for a good story.
Therefore it's always with some trepidation that I go to view a remaking of any classic movie and this year's retelling of 'The Time Machine' starring Our Own™ Guy Pearce (looking a little on the gaunt side) was no exception.
Directed by HG Wells' great-grandson Simon Wells, this remake, scripted by John Logan (Gladiator), has kept the concept and the elements of the original, while at the same time bringing something fresh to the story.
Is this a good thing? That's debatable.
Pearce plays Professor Alexander Hartdegen, a boffin inventor living in New York city in 1899. Obsessed with his work, his one distraction is his beautiful girlfriend Emma (Sienna Guillory), who was introduced to him by his best friend David Philby (Mark Addy).
When a terrible tragedy occurs, Alex builds a time machine so he can return to the past and change it. But this is the great time travel paradox... Can one ever change the past without impacting on the future?
And speaking of the future, that's where the Prof soon finds himself. Not that the future's looking too great either. Making a brief stopover in 2037 Alex is horrified to discover the moon is breaking up, causing havoc on earth. (In the 1960 version, with the world in the grip of Cold War paranoia, it was nuclear war engulfing the planet.)
After passing out, Alex wakes up to find himself 800,000 years in the future. Manhattan has reverted to jungle and humans have evolved into two distinctly different species, the peaceful, attractive Eloi and the cosmetically challenged, not very nice Morlocks.
It is the Morlock's leader, the subterranean dwelling Uber-Morlock (an almost unrecognisable Jeremy Irons), with his incredible psychic abilities, who can give Alex the answer to the question that has tortured him through the centuries...
While this version doesn't achieve the level of complexity and depth of the George Pal original, 42 years on HG Wells' story still translates into an exciting, thought provoking film. (Good performances help of course. Watch out for Irish pop singer Samantha Mumba as the Eloi woman Mara and Orlando Jones as a big know-it-all hologram.)
Whether it has what it takes to become a classic... only time - and young kids growing up to become film reviewers - will tell.
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