The Time Machine

We recently saw a new film titled The Invisible Man, which was the title of an H.G. Wells story. This new movie had nothing at all to do with the earlier one. Now here is another Wells title, and it is based on the book, but I sort of wish it hadn’t been. It’s only a take-off point, actually, with a man in Victorian times who builds a machine that takes him through an entire geological age after the collapse of society caused by … I’m not making this up … the destruction of the Moon by careless Lunar colonists (oops!) to the year 802,000. There he encounters the Eloi and the Morlocks, but before that the screenwriter had to add a new plot, in that his intent in using the machine was to change the past so that his sweetheart was not foully murdered by muggers. That’s getting to be a pretty tired theme, for me. And it all sort of falls apart. The last half hour looks as if they just ran out of money, as everybody chases through sets that are incredibly cheesy for this day and age. It’s only been a month since I saw it, and I swear I just can’t recall how it all came out. Nor do I care to.