Oh boy. This is going to be fun. Why? Because it isn't often that I see a movie that sucks as much as this one does, and it is refreshing to be able to critique, criticize, and complain since in most of my reviews I usually applaud, commend, and acclaim.
I never read the book, so I'll give author Michael Crichton the benefit of the doubt and place the blame on everyone associated with the film version. The synopsis might make it sound like a nice idea, which at its roots, it is. A company accidentally discovers a wormhole, that is, a portal between one place and time and another place and time. On the other end of this wormhole is Castlegard, France in the mid-14th century, which is in the midst of war between England and France. This is a twist on a pure time machine type of story because it avoids the mess of being able to constantly go back and try again, so to speak, when things don't turn out quite right. That is, the wormhole shoots back a fixed time period so as the present day's time advances, so does time advance on the other end of the wormhole.
So anyway, although the movie doesn't do all that great a job of explaining this, I'm intelligent enough to pick up on it and can accept the rules which have been established. The problem is what they do with such a rich setup. They crap on it is what they do. First of all, the movie headlines Paul Walker, from The Fast and the Furious (opposite Vin Diesel who truly stole the show there). But you take Walker out of this movie and it changes absolutely nothing. Here we have the main character completely uninvolved in any of the action that moves the story along. In every scene in which he takes part, there is another character right beside him doing all of the work. Also, you take him out and you greatly improve the acting in this movie.
The other thing this movie did horribly wrong was the action. There wasn't any. It is a very slow movie without all that much excitement. The only really intense part was when they first get to France and find themselves being hunted by the English, who conveniently kill off the extra characters to whittle it down to a manageable number of primary characters. Which brings me to my next point. Why do our time travelers side with the French? OF ALL PEOPLE? THE FRENCH! It makes absolutely no sense why they do this or why the Medieval Frenchmen accept them into their camp when they don't even speak French! And yet the English, who speak their same language, apparently hate them because they're wearing French-type clothing and one of them has a Scottish accent (as if accents and the language itself hasn't changed at all in 700 years). Give me a break.
Another thing that made this movie suck so much was the way in which they present time travel. Apparently, in order to go through the wormhole, you have to stand in a mirrored room. Then, as it fills up with smoke, you have to overact by contorting your face in all kinds of silly positions (see picture above). Then, you will suddenly be standing in medieval France. I'm thinking somebody left this part of the movie to their 12-year-old kid or something because it looks SO FAKE.
Finally, we get to the characters. Characters are what hold our interest for we are supposed to learn to care for them or to identify with them. The characters in this movie are all losers, except for 2 people. First of all, the real hero of the film is not Paul Walker's character, Chris, but rather Marek (Gerard Butler, pictured above) who makes the odd choice of staying behind in the mid-14th century instead of returning back to present-day when he has the chance. Why? Because he fell in love with a hot French chick. Nevermind that she doesn't shave her pits or bathe or brush her teeth, etc. HAHA. The only other interesting character was the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson, from The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions). Here, he is a French general, Lord Arnaut, whose sister is the Lady Claire (the hot French chick). Lord Arnaut doesn't really do all that much in the film, but it is funny to see him with long hair and a sword.
Don't waste your time on Timeline.
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