Product Details

• Actors: Guy Pearce, Yancey Arias, Mark Addy, Phyllida Law, Sienna Guillory
• Directors: Simon Wells
• Writers: John Logan, David Duncan, H.G. Wells
• Producers: Arnold Leibovit, David V. Lester, David Valdes, John Logan
• Format: PAL
• Language: English
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Run Time: 96 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (290 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000062V96

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

While the 1960 version of The Time Machine remains a science fiction classic, this adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel benefits from a dazzling CGI facelift. Digital wizardry shows us the awesome splendor of eons passing in an eye blink, while Wells's heroic time traveler--played with appealing conviction by Memento's Guy Pearce--is given a stronger motivation for piloting his time machine 800,000 years into the future. Long after New York City has crumbled and the moon shattered by a nuclear accident, Pearce finds a new home with the peacefully primitive Eloi, after confronting the subterranean Morlocks (courtesy of Stan Winson's monster shop) and their evil overlord (Jeremy Irons in wicked, pigmentless makeup). Trading Wells's social commentary for pure adventure, director Simon Wells (the author's great-grandson) maintains the story's legacy of wonder, despite a few hokey embellishments. Catering to a younger audience, this Time Machine is fun without being particularly distinguished--a treat for the eyes, if not the brain. --Jeff Shannon

From The New Yorker

In the future, we'll all be listening to Enya. The dyspeptic novel by H. G. Wells about a Victorian inventor who dabbles in time travel gets a New Age makeover courtesy of his great-grandson, the director Simon Wells. As Alexander Hartdegen, Guy Pearce does an admirable job of keeping a straight face, and his rides in the time machine are astonishing special-effects displays. One set piece-a triple-time morphing of nineteenth-century Manhattan into our skyscraper era-could be shown at the Hayden Planetarium. Even the improbable leaps of logic and the bland, international English dialogue don't really dampen the fun. It's when Pearce arrives in the future and discovers the Eloi (sort of like the Anasazi, except they're really into bamboo) that the race and class issues get an awkward, cringe-inducing treatment. Still, it's worth sticking around just to see Jeremy Irons as the Uber-Morlock. -Michael Agger
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Glitzier Does Not Mean Better, August 10, 2002

By 

Martin Asiner (jersey city, nj United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Machine [VHS] (VHS Tape)

It may be unfair, but a remake of a hit movie must always be compared to the original. The 1960 original of THE TIME MACHINE was a deserved hit. The 2002 version may be a treat for the eyes, but unfortunately, not for the brain. Part of the problem is that Simon Wells, the great-grandson of H. G. Wells, directed the movie as if he were more entranced with dazzling special effects (and dazzling they are) than with bringing out a believable, fully fleshed series of characters. In 1960, director George Pal wisely kept the focus squarely on the hero's adventures and why he helped the human Eloi. In 2002, Simon Wells clearly loved the image of leaping, loping half-humans that he had seen in previous sci-fi movies. The supporting cast in the age of the time traveler (David Pearce) did not do very much to point out his character. His girlfiend Emma (Sienna Guillory) was in the film only to motivate him to build a time machine to alter the past to avoid her death. One would think that such a clumsy device would not be sufficient by itself to galvanize the time traveller. In the original, Rod Taylor's scientific curiosity with time was quite sufficient a motivation.
The real hero of the movie is the special effects co-ordinator. The images of one day melding into the next are memorable. Further, the appearance of the Morlocks as a cross between man and fish stuns the senses. Jeremy Irons disappoints as the Morlocks leader. As Irons pontificates on the split between Eloi and Morlocks, the viewer can see under the pasty-white makeup and hear the Irons from DIE HARD III lecturing Bruce Willis on similar such claptrap. Further, the ending, which I shall not divulge here, is an incomprehensible mess of weird logic unconnected to resulting effect. What emerges by the end of the film is the growing realization that Simon Wells ought to have paid less attention to being different from his forebear and more attention to a director who knew how to weave a magical spell that would not get lost in the techo wizardry that passes for the cutting edge in computer special effects.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fun but forgettable, July 27, 2002

By 

Matthew Horner (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Machine (DVD)

"The Time Machine" is loosely based on H.G. Wells' sci-fi masterpiece, written in 1897. The book was also made into a movie forty years ago [available on DVD at Amazon.com]. Back then, the major studios had decided to cash in on the craze created by independent, low-budget sci-fi and horror films. MGM, for example, produced "The Time Machine" as well as "Forbidden Planet". These pictures - sleeker and glossier than anything the independents could make - used what were, at the time, state-of-the-art special effects. Today's version of the Wells classic utilizes the same tools. While the results are at times spectacular, it lacks a key ingredient - a dash of intelligence - that made the earlier version more memorable.

The time is the very end of the 19th Century. The place is New York. Alexander Hartegen [Guy Pearce] is a brilliant, absent-minded professor of science who is madly in love. When his fiancée dies tragically, he feels somehow responsible. Sequestering himself in his laboratory for four years, he builds a time machine. His plan is to go back, change the past and prevent his lover's death. When this fails, he realizes that any answer lies in the future. He travels to the New York of the mid-21st Century where he finds the planet in the midst of a catastrophe. The moon is breaking apart, and chunks of it are plummeting to Earth. In this melee he is knocked unconscious and awakens 800,000 years in the future. There he finds that the moon's destruction has caused mankind to split into two different species - one beautiful, innocent and benign, the other hideous and very dangerous.

As a fast-paced, mindless adventure, "The Time Machine" frequently succeeds. To truly enjoy it, you simply have to leave your sense of logic behind. The time travel sequences are beautifully rendered, although the fact that the machine always manages to wind up in the same spot is beyond ludicrous. The creatures who prey upon the pretty people of the future are deliciously gross and mean, but the way they move is not only obviously computer-generated but also in defiance of all know laws of gravity and of physics. Some of the people still speak English, which has not changed one bit in all those years. Think about how it's changed in just the last few hundred years. Archeological remnants of the past, which have apparently sat outside for 8,000 centuries, seem perfectly preserved. And, as to what would REALLY happen to the planet if the moon fell apart, let's not even go there.

Maybe it's just me, but sometimes it seems as though the smarter computers get, the dumber action/adventure and sci-fi movies become. It's as though the filmmakers are so infatuated with the gadgets and electronic wizardry that they forget all about the script. Much like the recent remake of "Planet of the Apes", "The Time Machine" winds up being fun but entirely forgettable.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars OK...But Could Have Been Alot Better, July 29, 2002

By 

Matthew S. Schweitzer "zohoe" (Columbus, OH United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Time Machine (DVD)

Simon Wells' "Time Machine" is an ambitious F/X laden re-make of the original sci-fi classic starring Rod Taylor as a time traveller who witnesses the destruction of civilization and travels 800,000 years into the future to find that mankind has survived a planetary catastrophe, but has in the process evolved into two speperate species, the submissive Eloi and the cannabalistic Morlocks. This new adaptation sticks closer to the 1960 film far more than H.G. Wells' classic novel, but despite the great sets, special effects, and Samantha Mumba's skimpy outfit, something is desperately missing from this outting.

Guy Pearce stars as Alexander Hartdegan, an eccentric physics professor from turn-of-the-century New York City who becomes obsessed with building a time machine after the tragic death of his fiance. Despite his attempts to travel back in time to save his love from death, he finds that he cannot change the past, and thus embarks on a journey into the future to find the answer as to why. After a brief stop-over in 2030 NYC, he witnesses the destruction of civilization as the Moon, blown asunder by a nuclear accident, rains down upon the earth and virtually wipes out mankind. He accidentally travels forward 800,000 years into the future only to find that, as in the original, humans have now evolved into two seperate species. It is here that the film loses it's energy and becomes bogged down in typical action fare and overblown special effects that tend to overpower and kill the story. While undeniably amazing, unfortunately, special effects do not make a good story. The film also suffers from a few big plot holes that are hard to ignore. For example, after only what is essentially a few hours of time travelling, Hartdegen seems to have completely forgotten his obsessive love for his dead fiance and falls for the beautiful Eloi woman Mara. Would someone who was so driven and grief-striken as our hero seems to be for the loss of his true love manage to totally forget about her in the course of a few hours or days? The film also feels as if it loses pacing in the middle, as if needed scenes are missing. Certain scenes ARE missing regarding the destruction of Earth during the fall of the Moon. These key scenes were cut in post-production after September 11 because they showed NYC being destroyed in a fiery rain of meteorites. I feel that these scenes may have helped add something to the film as it is never really made clear what happened that caused the destruction of the earth, as we are basically given a quick shot of the break-up of the Moon and the chaos that ensues, but the emotional tie-in that SHOULD be there is lost. In the original film, when Rod Taylor witnesses the destruction of his beloved London during a atomic attack, we feel the terror and awe of the destruction of all civilization, as it truly is the end of the world as we know it. "The labor of centuries...gone in an instant!" It illustrates man's frailty and transience in this world, how we hang precariously from a weak branch despite our belief in our own invulnerablity. But here, we get no such emotionally charge event, nothing to show the terror that anyone who witnesses the anihilation of the world as he knows it would experience. In losing this we lose something else that seems to leave the story lifeless as it degenerates into a Planet of the Apes rehash.

Despite a strong opening, the Time Machine loses its momentum in the last half and we are left, once again, wanting something more.