Rating: 
Summary: Good fun with a bit of history thrown in
Review: I read the book, Timeline, back when the game came out for it. Oddly, the game came out far too early - perhaps Timeline was supposed to come out much earlier as well. It probably doesn't help that the French are the good guys in this film. From the looks of the poster for Timeline, the advertising team didn't know what to do with it. Why in hell they didn't make it look like Lord of the Rings, I have no idea. But instead, we get a weird looking shot of a bow with a flaming arrow that also happens to have a timeline superimposed over it with some vector-like graphics. In short, it doesn't look medieval, or science fiction-ish, or Lord of the Rings-ish. It looks like crap, and that's a shame because Timeline is not crap. The plot is convoluted but essentially involves what I like to call Medieval Park. It's like Jurassic Park, only it involves knights. A rich billionaire wants to create a theme park that literally is a window into another time rather than genetically created dinosaurs. The concept is the same: rich guy plays with human lives in a supposedly safe environment - only it's not safe and ultimately the rich moron's arrogance is the death of a lot of people. This does not detract from the entertainment value of the movie, which hews closely to the book with a few exceptions. The story begins with archeologists in a boring field, showing students why it's not boring. Just like Jurassic Park's paleontologists. In this case, the real skeptic is the older son of the chief paleontologist. Their dig is around Castlegard and a guy who looks suspiciously like an evil Bill Gates funds it. Okay, that would make him a good Bill Gates. Let's just say he seems oilier and geekier than usual, a credit to the actor. The plot hurdles along as a wide variety of characters travel through time, including a historical reenactor, a pretty love interest, a marine or two, and a French guy. Things of course have already gone awry, which is why our protagonists are called in to save the day - and then things get screwed up even worse. There are a lot of characters and a lot of details that connect to each other in the past and present. The movie itself skips back and forth, detailing the action in medieval times as well as the panicked arguments of scientists in the present. The pacing is a little off at times, but the movie manages to interject quite a bit of excitement into what could otherwise be a drab, "look at the peasant woman carrying sticks!" (to quote Time Squad). Fortunately, that's not necessary, because medieval times were sufficiently exciting without embellishment. Unfortunately, a lot of the startling details in the book are lost in the movie translation. Axes and swords did not slide through mail so quickly - it would take several awful hacks at a prone opponent to kill him, a fact that horrifies the modern visitors. On screen, one stab kills a guy except for one notable exception (which made for a great moment of suspense). Similarly, both the horses and the men were described as being physically imposing, looming much larger than anyone is accustomed to in their daily modern life. All that is lost with the wide angle shots. Some characters lose their significance. Lady Claire is relegated to a messy peasant spy instead of a scheming sexpot who sleeps with a bishop to help the French. I of course understand why that detail was excised (America doesn't tolerate sexual freedom in female leads). Less forgivable is the role of the scientist who remains behind - he ultimately saves the day in the book after the time machine breaks down, but in the movie he pretty much just runs around screaming, "Oh my God, WADDAWEDONOW?!" The most obvious difference is the time travel itself. Since time travel in Timeline involves the use of a microscopic wormhole, the time travelers are shrunk down and then pushed through the hole. That would look positively ridiculous in the movie, so they wisely just left the time travel relatively F/X free. And yet, Timeline does hit the mark in several scenes. The launching of arrows from both the French and English are terrifying as they rain silent death on everyone in their path. Even better, the English lord uses "night arrows" after firing a volley of flaming arrows, surprising the French and horribly maiming many of the enemy archers. Being a history buff myself, watching trebuchets in action is a real treat. Because the grime and chaos of history is difficult to convey on screen when so many other historical epics have been portrayed, some of the characters' actions make less sense in the movie than in the book. In the book, the protagonists can escape because it's very hard to keep track of people with peasants, chickens, and decaying brick all around. In the movie, the good guys just run in a random direction and get away from the bad guys - over and over and over, even though the majority of events all take place within the same location. Taking all this into account, Maleficent and I both enjoyed Timeline quite a bit. It's good fun with a bit of history thrown in. But I still think they should have done a better job advertising it as if it were Lord of the Rings 2.5.
Rating: 
Summary: Paramount really dropped the ball on this one!
Review: The book "Timeline" is a really awesome and fascinating book about the whole concept of time travel, even if it is too far fetched for it to ever become a reality. I was amazed at the books concept and wondered how they would be able to adapt it to the big screen. Sadly, whatever was good about that book is thrown right out the window when on the big screen adaptation. This movie just soils the fun of the book and the result is a totally atrocious and absolutely laughable stinker of a movie. This movie in fact feels almost nothing like the book, not that I was expecting a whole lot to be taken out of the book and placed onto the movie but even when looking at it from a non-reader, this movie is just plain awful. The acting by almost all of the cast is hollow and the directing is just lame. In fact, I haven't seen a movie that was so badly miscast like this in many years, at least since "Batman & Robin" from years back which was also awful in it's own right. "Timeline" is one of the prime examples of how they could take a great and amazing book with an awesome concept and rob it of all of it's meaning with a really mindless mess of a movie and ruin the book's legacy. While it's far from being one of the worst movies of all time, that belongs to "Dumb and Dumberer" and "Gigli", "Timeline" is one of the weakest movies of 2003. Tell Paramount and Company to go back to the movie studio and start all over on this movie because I refuse to accept this as an adaptation of the Crichton Novel. A total disappointment. Do not waste your time on this movie.
Rating:
Summary: A Bomb in Medieval France
Review: I am a very easy-going fan of both books and movies, easy to please and very diverse in my tastes, so I am almost ashamed to write this review, but here goes... Avoid this movie! I absolutely loved the book and expected the movie to vary, but this was a horrible adaptation of one of my favorite books. Marek was portrayed decently, but the other characters were flat and poorly acted. The movie was not well paced and had I not read the book I would have had no idea what was going on. The only parts of the book taken were the concept, the beginning (very loosely) and parts of the end (again very loosely). What they decided to do in the middle was a complete mystery. I feel that this book could very easily become an excellent film ... someday (Keep it away from Paramount). I have come to the conclusion that Donner can't direct and couldn't have survived without an excellent actor/actress with charisma in his films (like Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapons). This movie was one of the absolute worst films I have seen in recent years. It beat out my old modern all-time bad film: MI-2, which at least had some action at the end to salvage an otherwise horrid film. Unfortunately this film had no saving graces as such. Again, I love the concept, I love the book, but keep Paramount & Donner away from good ideas, they will tear them apart to make ... yet another bad movie.
P.S. - another bomb of a movie to steer clear of is, (drumroll please) yet another Paramount production, Star Trek: Nemesis. They took something they've had for years, a great show, then good movies & made an absolute stinker of a film. I think I put more effort into this rant than the filmakers did in any of the mentioned movies in this 'review'. If your looking for a medieval type film, watch something like Kevin Costner & Morgan Freeman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, or a good time travel movie, watch a Terminator flick (good for the action anyway), Frequency or the Back to The Future Trilogy. Don't waste time or money on this film. Buy the book, you won't regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Horrible Movie
Review: I am sorry I spent my money to see this movie in the theatre. The acting was stiff, the costumes and historic details were inappropriate for the time period portrayed and I dont even want to discuss "night arrows" as a legitimate battle tactic. Dont waste your time with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Stunk!
Review: The book is amazing but this movie is just a very disasterous adaptation of the book. The result was a movie that felt like it had nothing to do with the book and was just a forgettable hodgepodge of weak acting and awful script. A total dissapointment. Stick with your books and tell the studios to try again at adapting to this to the big screen because this 2003 version does no justice at all to the book. No wonder Crichton lamented this mess.
Rating:
Summary: Oh leave Donner alone....
Review: The critics of this movie point to the miscasting and the weak story, I do not belive Richard Donner is to blame here. He tried to stay as faithful to the book as he could, but it's clear that Paramount never belived in the movie and did not give him the time or budget to really do the movie justice. I even heard that Donner quit Paramount after they fired his friend, Jerry Goldsmith who was originally supposed to score the movie. I am not surprised if that is true, Paramount has become a pretty patheic film company of late and their movies have tended to stink.
Rating:
Summary: Fair adaption of the book, fun action flick....
Review: While many feel this film is not very true to the book, it is a pretty fair film adaption of the book. Most of the MAJOR elements are kept in the film and those areas cut mostly involved the character Chris, which is a good thing since it means less Paul Walker. The first 15 minutes pretty much cover the first half of the book, and the rest is kind of spread out over the next 115 minutes. True, when they go back in time they do not take into account the language barrier of Middle English and Middle French, but personally, I wouldn't want to sit through the movie with subtitles, which would have to be present if they kept this in the movie. They could have kept the ear piece part of the book, however, to explain at least part of this. Also, many people seem to feel that Chris being the professor's son is crazy since the professor is Scottish in the movie and Chris is American. Um, believe me, there are plenty of people in the world who have fathers who are of another country and have another accent... I really don't understand this critique. The acting may not be top notch, although Butler is definately the stand-out performance of the bunch, but I have seen far worse acting in other movies. Overall, this is a good movie, not great, but worth watching. Personally, I adored the book and I like the movie. I feel, even with the few changes and unrealistic moments, it is a fair adaption. It is definately NOT the worst adaption of a book EVER... That would either go to "Bonfire of the Vanities", "Congo", "Sphere" or some other I cannot think about. At least most of the general plot and events are present in the movie, even if they are changed slightly. If you are going to compare this to other medieval movies, or try to take it too seriously (as many seem to be doing), then this movie is not for you. Sure it may not be the caliber of Braveheart or Lord of the Rings, but I don't feel it was meant to be. It could have been much better, but it is not as much of a disaster as many keep exclaiming.
Rating:
Summary: the worst adaptation ever!!
Review: I wasn't expecting very much, to be honest. But I never thought that Richard Donner, usually a fine action movie director, could make such a piece of trash like this one. It's the worst book to screen adaptation I've ever seen in my life, and I've seen a lot of bad adaptations. It's unbelievable: none of the good things in the book were translated to film; The interesting facts about medieval way of life (costumes, ancient dialects, architecture, etc), the scientific explanation for time travel, the historical facts, whatever. It looks like a episode of Fantastic Journey (the seventies tv show) only less intelligent. It's already a forgotten film. If you didn't see it, don't bother. There's a lot of better things to do with the ticket money, like buying a six pack of beer and throwing the empty cans on the Donner's windows.
Rating: 
Summary: Adventure, action, fantasy all packed in one movie!
Review: I've read the book, I've seen the movie, and I HAVE to say of course that the book will always be better as the movie itself. BUT if you're a fan of action and adventure movies you will certainly not be disappointed and therefore I recommend it to anyone who just wants to have a good time and doesn't bother whether the scenes make sense emotionally or not. Don't think about it, relax and watch, it's always worth a look. Butler is terrific as usual and Paul Walker, well, i love his performance, i love his movies, and he did a great job at this movie as well. I'll forever be in awe!
Rating:
Summary: The book is always better, but the movie had some moments.
Review: Timeline is destined to be one of those movies that if seen, will be a cult classic. I sat through it in a theatre and didn't want to miss a moment, but there was definitely a weak script and some awful acting mostly by Paul Walker. Handsome as he is, he either was not given much direction or he's just in the wrong business. I cannot figure out why he was given top billing when Gerard Butler clearly carried the pic. Butler was the bright spot and the only person in the cast that seemed to truly be enjoying himself playing his character to the hilt. The concept of the story is creative, following that thread was sometimes tricky, but that's why movies don't always paint as clear a picture as the book. Timeline would have had to have been at least an hour longer to have run more smoothly. Along the way, some of the characters that started out on top just got lost. I love Billy Connelly, but his character sort of faded away. It was nice to see him on screen again with Butler though, since they performed as brothers in Mrs. Brown. The action and scenery were enjoyable. The dastardly characters were quite that, although they were played in an almost Pythoesque manner. There are funny bits and sad bits and sweet bits and since it's all meant for entertainment, isn't that what we want? I will definitely rent this and maybe even buy it. Gerard Butler's performance alone is worth that and then some.
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