Customer Reviews

A Sound of Thunder

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(24)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

I am so tempted to recommend "A Sound of Thunder," not because it's good, but it simply may be one of those movies you have to see to believe. No description can prepare you for viewing this perversely bad sci-fi epic. It is based on a Ray Bradbury short story, and not having read it, I'll simply assume it was a cheesy bit of fun. What with time travel and dinosaurs combined, it seems like it would be a rousing adventure or at least a fun lark. Heck, the idea behind the movie is solid enough. Unfortunately, this idea has led to disaster!

The movie relies heavily on its visuals, and yet those visuals seem to have come straight out of TV's "Land of The Lost." Every building is fake, every plant is fake, every car is fake (I especially love the animated traffic! It is truly and amazingly bad!) and I haven't even gotten to the special creature effects. Well, let's just say that they're not so special. We've got a plastic dinosaur, gorilla lizards, bat pterodactyls and my favorite which is an underwater dragon snake straight out of a Chinese New Year's parade. And don't even try to analyze the science/logic, just take whatever happens at face value.

All of this is so silly, you can't get any real thrills. But the movie doesn't even have the sense to play for dumb fun! It's a critical mistake, trust me, because this could have been a camp classic. But under Peter Hyams' leaden direction, it simply plods along from one ridiculous event to another. Believe it or not, this film also boasts some name talent. Ben Kingsley is on hand briefly, one can hope he picked up a nice paycheck. And our hero is played by Edward Burns. I'm not sure what Burns has been doing lately. Once a promising filmmaker himself and an actor in notable films like "Saving Private Ryan," he is out of his element here. If his character had one ounce of humor, charm, or personality, I might have added a star. But, as is, it may be the most wooden, one-dimensional performance I've seen in quite some time.

Enter at your own risk. This is only for the little kids, the masochists, or the woefully inebriated. KGHarris, 10/06.

I have not read the Ray Bradbury short story, so I can't speak as to how the movie compares to it. Taken as an individual work, this film is not bad at all. The key is to not take everything so seriously. There's a lot of action to enjoy and much of it is very creative. The film is basically clean and probably should have been rated PG.

For those of you who like to take your films seriously, I have several warnings.

1) The effects are not great, and in some scenes downright poor. The scenes in which the characters travel along Chicago streets in 2055 are very weak, but the scenes of the various "animals" are pretty decent.

2) The acting is not very good. Ben Kingsly does well as the evil rich guy, but Edward Burns seems to have been given poor lines and direction. The female lead, Catherine McCormick, is completely unlikeable throughout the film as an angry radical.

3) The time travel logic doesn't really make sense. The concept of the butterfly effect is that some minor change in the past can lead to major changes in the future. However, in this film things just don't add up.

Still, I watched this film with no expectation of it being good, and I ended up having a fun time watching it. I just ignored the 3 points I mentioned above. I enjoyed seeing the characters trying to overcome their challenges to defeat the various "animals" they encountered. There was quite a bit of action and suspense that was fun.

If you enjoy sci-fi films, but aren't too much of a purist, you'll probably have fun with this. Don't expect any special features, because all you have are the 2 trailers.

Life is a delicate balance between order and disorder. Once small disturbance... One minor infraction of nature's law is all it takes.

This movie is based on a short story by Ray Bradbury.

Chicago 2054. We have discovered a way to do time travel. Even though we use it for recreational purposes there may be a deeper impact.

The application of the story may be misleading as we see from trailers somebody steps on a butterfly however this was not really the problem but the effect. You should be aware of the saying "keep your powder dry." In this case a beautiful woman caused negligence which caused a short which caused the butterfly effect. Moral of the story is don't let a beautiful woman distract you or it may be the end of the world.

Just a side note, it looks like they tried to include every disaster movie you've ever seen and big bug movie (okay little bug), volcanoes, monkeys taking over the world, flora gigantices, and many more unspeakable disasters. Oh and don't forget the evil, uncaring, unthinking, unscrupulous, and many more un's of the government. And don't forget Ben Kingsley as the corporate head who has more un's than the government.

Coming back to the actual movie presentation, the graphics are appallingly hokey. They spend a lot of time on a treadmill in front of a blue screen and don't have any qualms about letting you know that they are more interested in the story than the visuals. Maybe we should be too; yet it is very distracting to see how disjointed the people scenes are from the graphic scenes. This has all the feel of a hallmark movie without the romance.

I'm sure that they're just trying to deliver one simple message. "Don't mess with mother nature"

This movie is trash. Taking a wonderful and profound work of Ray Bradbury and turning it into this muck...unforgivable.

The acting? Atrocious. It was even to bad to be comical. It was almost as if the actor's had signed up to do it years ago, and were resentful of having to now take time out and do it.

And what in the H was Ben Kingsly doing in this?! Good god. He is a huge talent...what was the behind this? Who knows! Just don't watch it!

I am a Sci-Fi fan going back 4 decades. I first read "A Sound of Thunder" in 1974 at age 15, and it remains one of my absolute favorite Sci-Fi short stories. This movie sucks; it is a perversion of Bradbury's great story. It just goes to show that Hollywood cannot make a good or great movie from an excellent Sci-Fi short story.

Okay, the film is not 100% faithful to Bradbury's story.. and like many lower budget films older CGI effects are all that can be afforded, but a film should not be graded for simple effects...but for STORY.

The plot was tampered with enough to make the film less than perfect, BUT compared to the higher budgeted crap that Hollywood has passed off as sci-fi in the recent past, this was an enjoyable movie.

Not really a "good" movie but the premise is pretty interesting. It raises some questions about mankind doing too much with technology. Scientists develop a time machine, and one man uses it to take rich guys back in time for an adventure. Of course something goes wrong and the rest of the movie is spent trying to fix it. Not too bad but nothing to rush to see. If this were 1989 i would say the graphics looked awesome, but since it isn't....... well you get the picture.

The premise (as in the Bradbury story)is straight forward and leads to unforeseen consequence. In this film, however, the consequences do not follow logically or plausibly. Just one example is are the primate-saurian chimeras as a result this particular time paradox is unconvincing given that primates and dinosaur/bird ancestors were already geneticly and evolutionarily separate lines at the time of the paradox. Gradual rather than instantaneous alterations to the future are equally dubious.

While its OK for a film to have some dodgy logic in order to make up a good story -- in this instance it distracts and takes away from the film. Surely the budget for this film had room to employee a writer with better story telling and SF genre skills.

bad directing, not enough money, bad CGI, and bad directing. the idea of changing something in the past causes the future to be completely fkd up is not a new idea, so why does anyone without the right amount of funds even attempt something as large as what this movie was trying to achieve. maybe this was supposed to be a comedy, but who's for certain. i can't recomend this except for those of you who are looking for something cheesy to pass the time. the special effects are up there with the Sega CD, if that gives you any indication.

Turn it into your own personal "MST3K" event and poke fun all you want. There's plenty to poke fun at: acting, effects, dialogue, etc. It's a great example of current B-movie science fiction. Future generations will look back on this one and have a great laugh.