November 26, 2003 -- “Timeline” is a film about time travel that has one of the worst plots I've ever seen in a time travel story. There are holes in it big enough to drive the universe through. This story makes “Timecop” look positively brilliant by comparison. Everybody knows you have to be careful when you script a time travel movie because things that happen in the past affect the present. Movies like “Frequency” and “Back to the Future” were effective because they were very carefully scripted (and they starred actors who can really act). “Timeline” is a real train wreck of a film on many levels.

“Timeline” stars Paul Walker of “The Fast and the Furious” as Chris Johnston, one of the time travelers, who goes back to a 14th France to find his father, Professor Edward Johnston (played by Billy Connolly of “White Oleander”). The movie does not explain why Chris Johnston's father and brother both have thick Scottish accents, while he has none. The movie also fails to explain time travel, except that it involves a mysterious stable wormhole (which would swallow the earth if it existed) and a teleportation device (also known as a disintegrator-integrator in the old “The Fly” movies). You put a person in the device, he is converted to electrons, transmitted to another location and reassembled into matter. This is theoretically possible, maybe a hundred years in the future. Anyway, the matter transmission beam has been hijacked by the wormhole, sending everyone back in time. The problem with this kind of time travel is there is no teleportation device in 14th century France to turn the time travelers from electrons back into matter, or to turn them from matter back into electrons and transmit them back to the future. Probably these logical matters are explained by Michael Crichton in his book on which this film is based, but they are not explained in the movie.

There was probably also a better explanation about how certain historical facts are changed by the time travelers and how the time travelers know about both the altered time lines and the unaltered time lines. At one point, early in the film, we see an artifact that is the result of an altered time line, yet the people looking at this artifact, hundreds of years after it was created, still remember history the way it was before the time travelers changed it. Theoretically, the presence of the artifact means they should not be able to remember both versions of history, only the “new” version of history after the timeline is altered. Yet the time travelers still remember the “old” version of history, despite the fact that history has been forever changed, sort of like the “new” version of Marty McFly's parents at the end of “Back to the Future.” This is one of those things you have to be careful about, and this film is very careless with these matters. It is also pretty careless with its characters. Some of them behave in ways that are wildly inconsistent.

The film bumbles along with some fairly good action. The director, Richard Donner (“Conspiracy Theory”), is a good action director, and it shows here. There are plenty of sword fights, an army storming a castle, the rescue of a princess in danger and all the usual stuff. Some characters are killed for no particular reason. Others are spared for no particular reason. And who would have expected a movie these days where the French are brave heroes while the English are the bad guys? The only big name star in this film is Paul Walker and he is certainly doesn't have the acting ability or the charisma to carry this project. Connolly is certainly a good actor and he seems like he's the only one having fun with his role. What could have been a silly, fun romp comes out far too serious, with too many central characters getting killed. The fact that they are killed is a kind of mercy, however. It is the only way to get out of this nearly incoherent story. This film looks like it had the makings of a bad television series, but never quite made it that far. This movie rates a D.

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Copyright © 2003 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
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