2002 sci-fi movie
Rating: 11/20
Plot: Pretty much the same as this one. Only it's different.
The perfect example of a movie that just keeps getting worse as it goes. I'm not familiar enough with the H.G. Wells' novel to know whether this or the George Pal one from 1960 is more faithful to his book. This pays homage to the 1960 film with some visual references--including the mannequins that I liked so much in the first movie--but the story evaporates and becomes a dumb action movie by the end. Maybe it's unfair, but I just expect a movie adapted from a classic sci-fi novel to be way more intelligent. They bring in Jeremy Irons near the end of this to class things up, but his costume and make-up are too goofy to take any of his scenes seriously.
There's just something sticky about the way 21st Century movies handle the past. It's like a newly-painted room that just doesn't look natural, a room that you know isn't lived in. I can't buy the look of the 19th Century in this movie, and when the computer animators come in to create the near future and then the far-far future, I can't really buy any of that either. The CGI gets really spotty once creatures are involved. And man, those Morlocks are just wrong. What is this supposed to be?
And then, here's Jeremy Irons--a smoky albino.
I don't think H.G. Wells would like this at all.
Guy Pearce plays our protagonist in this version, and he's doing it all for love, absurdly. I always forget that Guy Pearce even exists, but I've liked him in things. Here, he acts with his mouth perpetually agape. For whatever reason, I was completely distracted by Guy Pearce's mouth. There are scenes when you could have fit an entire Madonna in there.
By the way, I'm being haunted by Ecclesiates 1:4--"Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever." There was a reference to that verse somewhere in this movie [Is it on a New York landmark? I think it was in the landmark graveyard in this movie.] and it was mentioned in a book about Hemingway that I was reading, probably because he used it in The Sun Also Rises. Same day and everything. I think God (or Solomon) is trying to tell me something.
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