Timeline

[Remo D]

I was just curious enough to check this one out--and it wasn't terrible, but it was nothing special, either.

You know the drill--people look at the archaeological digs and wonder how certain things came to pass... then they wind up travelling back in time and making them happen themselves. (Through most of the second half, I kept asking myself "Which one is going to get his ear cut off?")

I don't think anybody ever accused Richard Donner of not knowing how to handle action, and there's some good Hundred Years War battle material (flame catapults, night arrows, stuff like that), and the script is willing to kill (supposedly) major characters off--but the whole thing remains strictly by the numbers. Perhaps the devil's in the details when it comes to Michael Crichton's books--THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN and JURASSIC PARK can work as movies, but then you also wind up with stuff like CONGO and SPHERE... and TIMELINE, where they have to breeze through the details but still take two hours to tell what should have been an hour-long TV episode. Without the full force of Crichton's background material, there's precious little difference between TIMELINE and an episode of SLIDERS.

Oh--plot--forgot. They've got to go back and rescue Scottish comedian Billy Connolly (who doesn't do funny stuff here). And they're just in time for the French incursion against the English villains--and so we've got Scotsmen and an unlucky Frenchman in trouble.

Nice try--but this one's strictly cable fodder.