Short version: Dragonball: Evolution is a badly written film with horrible dialogue, lackluster action and a sense of fun that’s nowhere to be found.

Screen Rant’s Ross Miller reviews Dragonball: Evolution

When you head to the theater to see a movie called Dragonball: Evolution, you obviously aren’t expecting Shakespeare. From the advertising, the whole thing gives off a feeling of light, campy, action-packed fun that you would hope would allow you to just sit back, relax and turn off your brain for 90 minutes or so.

Yeah, well, that’s why we have words like “hope” as a counterpoint to “guarantee.”

Dragonball: Evolution may very well be one of the worst films of the past 12 months or so – I am actually struggling to think of the last movie I thought was quite as bad as this one was. And it’s not one of those cases where it’s just not my cup of tea… No, this is a flat-out bad movie in pretty much every area that makes up a motion picture.

Based on the popular anime series of the same (or at least similar) name, Dragonball: Evolution follows Goku (played by Justin Chatwin) who carries out his grandfather’s dying request to find Master Roshi (played by Chow Yun-Fat) and locate all seven of the powerful Dragon Balls. He already has one of them, but with the help of Bulma (played by Emmy Rossum), Master Roshi and Yamcha (played by Joon Park), he must find the others before the evil Lord Piccolo (played by James Marsters) does, whose intentions are to use them to take over the world.

Now let me just point out that I very much represent those who are not fans of the source material, and in fact know next to nothing about it. I can say without reservation that I am in the majority – if you’re a fan it may feel like everyone in the world is a fan of the cartoon, but trust me, most of the general movie-going population (who will be exposed to this through TV and other marketing) will barely even have heard of it, never mind having seen any of it.

So I then have to judge the film purely on its own merits, without having the prior knowledge to be able to compare and contrast it with the source material. Some fans of the cartoon may get a kick out of seeing such things as a certain costume or a hairstyle appear in some form, but as a movie this thing flat out stinks. And not even in a “yeah it was bad, but kind of fun in spite of that” kind of way – in pretty much all areas you can think of, it is awful.

The main problem with the film is the script, meaning both dialogue and the story. First off, I can’t believe how bad the dialogue was in this movie. From the very first scene in the film, which sees the movie starting off with a short back story explanation, the dialogue is painful. Near the beginning of the movie we see Goku being trained to fight by his grandpa while balancing on two ropes – and the back and forth exchange of dialogue is like something written to sound cool, but is delivered and pulled off so poorly that it’s cheesy and downright cringe-worthy.

That’s pretty much representative of the entire movie right off the bat – everything comes off as cheesy, nothing can be taken seriously, not even when Goku is supposed to be upset right after his grandfather dies (which happens within the first 10 minutes, so that’s not really a spoiler). Every time a character opens their mouth and delivers this atrocious excuse for dialogue, I felt like covering my ears and shutting my eyes in embarrassment (which I did do a handful of times, I’m not even kidding).

Well, you might be thinking “so what?” Who cares if the dialogue is bad and high on the cheese-meter? The action has to make up for that, right? Well, wrong. Actually, dead wrong. Action is the one thing that could have saved this movie from the abyss, but they even manage to muck that potential up. The action is not just mediocre or even sub-par – oh no, it’s worse than that - it’s terrible. Director James Wong clearly doesn’t know how to direct the needed action (although he seemed to do okay with Jet Li’s The One), and the attempts he makes are reminiscent of a young kid having fun in a special effects studio, just randomly pressing any of the fancy buttons on display.

They attempt to have 300-esque action scenes of things going from normal speed to slow-motion and then suddenly speeding back up to normal again. But for such a technique to be effective you have to know what you’re doing, and it’s evident from this movie that Wong doesn’t. Zack Snyder, although using it a bit too flippantly in 300, timed the slowing down thing pretty much perfectly, matching up exactly with the action on-screen and giving that extra bit of kick. But here it’s used far, far too often for no reason other than to just have it in there for the sake of it. There’s a strange sense that the movie thinks what it’s doing is cool… but “laughable” is more the accurate description.

You probably want to know how the cast did… Well unfortunately, like the rest of the movie, pretty awful. Justin Chatwin is completely miscast in the role of Goku (for some reason an American playing this character just doesn’t feel right), Emmy Rossum is hot but nonetheless terrible as Bulma, and I feel embarrassed that Chow Yun-Fat has gone from amazing stuff like Hard Boiled and The Killer to eye-rolling stuff like this. The only actor who did all right (and I stress, just all right) was James Marsters as (an underused) Lord Piccolo – he’s not in any way good, but, let’s just say… he was less terrible than the rest of the cast.

The only thing I can think of that’s even remotely positive about Dragonball: Evolution is that the special effects are pretty cool at times. Not during some of the hand-to-hand combat scenes (where the effects are so obviously… effects, if you know what I mean), but when they use what is known as “KI attacks,” which are basically blasts of different colored energy from their hands.

Props go to Amalgamated Dynamics for creating special effects which are, on their own, quite visually stunning. Also, the movie is really quite short, so at least I didn’t have to sit through the pain for all that long.

However, that’s pretty much where the positive stuff ends – you just know a movie is in trouble when you are literally straining to think of something you liked about it.

I don’t know if the story they used here in any way resembles the original cartoon/anime stories, but how they told it in the movie was abysmal. There were clearly elements taken from the source material, and it is then clearly a story (or one of the stories… I don’t know, I’m not a Dragonball fan) that may work well in a cartoon but it does not work well on the big-screen. Not for even the slightest moment.

I lost count of the number of times I rolled my eyes, snickered, groaned, and shook my head in embarrassment and shame during this movie. I can’t actually believe the filmmakers looked at the script and thought, “Yes, this is good stuff. Let’s go ahead and make it!” It’s probably just one of those cases where they saw the popularity of the source material and thought that they could make a quick buck by just throwing anyone in the roles, sticking together bits and pieces from the cartoon to form something resembling a story.

So needless to say I don’t recommend Dragonball: Evolution. I wasn’t expecting this to be any good, but I don’t know if I was expecting it to be this bad. Please, if you believe in the magic of cinema, avoid this with as much effort as it takes.

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Short version: The Spirit is two hours of your life that you’ll never get back.

Screen Rant reviews The Spirit

Wow.

That’s the first word that comes to mind as I think about The Spirit. It’s an example of a movie that just leaves me plain dumbfounded. It’s so awful that I’m completely in the dark as to how a movie like this can ever actually get funded, produced and make it into movie theaters.

The very first line of dialog spoken in the movie was utterly cheesy – and that set the tone for the entire movie. I wasn’t sure what I was in for… I’d seen the footage and the trailers and it ALL looked horribly bad, but I thought that there might be something else to the film that either wasn’t being conveyed in the footage we’d seen, or that would make what we HAD seen somehow “work.”

As Alex Trebek would say on Jeopardy: “Sorry, no.”

In The Spirit, former police officer Denny Colt (Gabriel Macht) (who was gunned down in the line of duty) is now a masked crime fighter in Central City. He’s alive because he was a guinea pig for a scientist’s experiment on immortality.

He doesn’t remember how or why he’s come back from the dead, and hasn’t really cared until his arch-nemesis “The Octopus” (Samuel L. Jackson) tells him that they have more in common than The Spirit thinks. One of the odder things in the movie (which was never explained) is his need to be tended to by Dr. Ellen Dolan (Sarah Paulson) to help him recover – even though he supposedly has Wolverine-like healing powers.

The Spirit works closely with the police and in particular with the Commisioner (Dan Lauria), who happens to be Ellen’s father. He thinks the masked one is losing it due to his obsession with the Octopus, plus he’s not happy with the fact that the Spirit seems to both put out and be extremely susceptible to pheromones – falling in love with every woman he meets. Ellen pines for the Spirit and even though he romances other women right in front of her, she still can’t help herself.

The Octopus is looking for the key to immortality, and even though he’s most of the way there, he needs to drink some of “Heracles blood” to seal the deal. He has a bunch of cloned henchmen all played by Louis Lombardi who make the “Otis” character in the Superman movies look brilliant by comparison. They wear t-shirts each with a different saying on them – the first three guys have either “Pathos,” “Egos” or “Logos” on their shirt. Later on as more copies appear they have other single, and progressivly stupider, words on them.

Following the swamp fight between the Octopus and the Spirit that included a giant wrench, a toilet and… wait for it…. the kitchen sink, the t-shirt gag was a clue that perhaps director Frank Miller was going for an Adam West/1960s Batman TV show type of camp with the film.

See but here’s the problem: “Camp” is actually supposed to be funny.

And what happens when camp fails to be funny? You’re just left with “stupid.”

There is so much wrong with this movie that I can’t take the time to document it all. There’s cringe inducing dialog (”I had you beat like eggs.”), bizarre visual choices (most of the time The Spirit’s sneakers glowed white), and idiotic story points (Ellen tends to self-healing Spirit while a police officer is critically injured by multiple gunshot wounds). Oh, I could go on – a flashback scene where the Spirit is talking to a cat (and there were a lot of cats in the movie… not sure what the heck THAT was all about), Eva Mendes as San Serif making a photocopy of her “perfect ass,” etc., etc.

The ONE scene in the movie that actually made me laugh was when the Spirit was tied up in a chair and the Octopus was monologing (you know, explaining his evil plan right before the good guy gets free and thwarts the evil plan) and the Spirit asks: “Is there a point to all this? I’m getting bored.” It echoed my thoughts completely.

I’m truly dumbfounded that both the studio and the actors involved in this read this script and STILL went on to finance/become involved with the film. Even on paper this MUST have looked utterly idiotic. If they thought that writer/director Frank Miller (yes, he wrote AND directed this train wreck) would be able to make this work somehow they were sorely mistaken. This is a perfect example of that Hollywood myopia in which you can have dozens (if not hundreds) of people working on a film, watching dailies – and for some bizarre reason no one can tell it’s a steaming pile.

The only reason I’m giving this even half a star is out of deference to Sarah Paulson, who was probably one of the best things in the film (and that’s not saying much) and to Gabriel Macht, who I just pity for having the starring role in this film. Hopefully it doesn’t kill his career – he seems like he’s a decent actor. As to Samuel L. Jackson – Good Lord, man… don’t you have enough money? Can’t you be a bit more discerning in what roles you pick? Pretty soon no one will take you seriously as an actor.

Some people may say this is “fun”… me? I’d use the word “painful.” Avoid The Spirit at all costs.

It’s not even worthy of the “so bad it’s funny” badge – it’s just plain awful.

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By Vic Holtreman

Short version: I didn’t think it was possible, but AVP-R is worse than the previous Aliens vs Predator movie.

Abandon all hope ye who enter a movie theater that is showing Aliens vs Predator: Requiem.

It’s that bad. I kid you not. As first time directors, “The Brothers Strauss” (as they are referred to in the credits) are great visual effects guys. Honestly, I’m having a hard time coming up with ways to tell you just how depressingly awful this movie is, but I’ll do my best.

Within minutes of the start of the film I was bored and my mind started to wander. It opens aboard a Predator ship, where a dead comrade is presumably being transported to the home world directly after the events of the last film. An Alien bursts forth from the dead Predator, shortly taking out the entire crew and crashing the ship on Earth.

Immediately I wondered just how this could happen so easily. In the last film the premise was that Predators had been using Antarctica as the location for a rite of passage or training ground for Predators. For many years (was it centuries?) the Predator race had been doing this very thing.

So how is it that they could be so oblivious to the possibility that a dead comrade might be home to a gestating Alien? How is it that one Alien was able to take down the crew of a Predator ship (these guys ARE hunters, right?) so easily?

Once the ship crashes one of the mortally injured Predators manages to send a distress call which is pi,cked up by an elder on their home world. It was marginally cool to get a glimpse of their world, but that’s about it. He heads out for destination Earth.

Once the story cuts to the residents of the small town it gets even worse. We meet a variety of characters whose lives will clumsily come together as the movie progresses. We have an inexperienced (and inept) sheriff, the rebel/criminal brother of a local teen who comes back to town, that teen lusting after the local hottie who is dating a jerk/bully.

We also have Reiko Aylesworth as Kelly: a mom returning home after some unspecified amount of time to an estranged little girl and stay at home dad. The whole role reversal thing here creeped me out a bit for some reason.

She is probably the only person in the entire film who demonstrated any acting ability above what you might see in a high school play. We don’t really care about what happens to any of the characters despite the weak attempts at trying to connect the audience with them.

Oh, who cares about the acting, right? You want to see this for the action. Well I’m sorry to report that 90% of the time the scenes were shot in such a way that between the low lighting, rain, extreme close ups and quick cuts you can’t even tell what the hell is going on. Nor do you care much, as the whole thing seems assembled with less reason for being than a video game plot.

Then there were the really vile bits, like Aliens invading a hospital and finding easy hosts for their “little ones.” Beyond the idea of using the sick and helpless for this were a couple of scenes in the maternity ward where a woman who is going into labor is attacked by an Alien and has eggs deposited inside her in a repulsive manner (no, not THAT, but it was still disgusting).

Seriously, if I wasn’t going to review this I was so bored and disinterested I would have walked out 20 minutes in. It seems that my initial reactions to AVP-R turned out to be right after all. Of late I had been getting cautiously optimistic that there might be some chance that this would actually redeem the first, but it’s actually worse.

While I gave the first on only 1.5 stars, at least it got to be a bit of fun in the second half, but this one is almost completely without any value. There were a couple of very brief moments that were cool between the Pred-Alien and the Predator, but I’d count those at no more than maybe two or three eye-blink moments, tops.

I know the Strauss brothers are big fans of both franchises and had good intentions, but Aliens vs Predator: Requiem proves that being a big movie fan does not necessarily mean that you can make a good movie.

Folks, seriously, don’t bother. This thing is going to tank hard at the box office and if you see it anyway don’t come crying to me because YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

I can only hope this will sound the death knell for this sci fi movie franchise merger.

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By Brian Rentschler

Short version: This movie was so bad that it was almost painful to watch.

I was more than a little stunned after seeing this movie. Not just because it was one of the worst movies I had ever seen, but also because of who was involved in it. Most of the cast ranged from competent to top-notch, and the writer/director was Roger Avary. For those of you who aren’t familiar with that name, he was a co-writer for Beowulf, which received a positive review right here on Screen Rant. He also collaborated with Quentin Tarantino to come up with the stories for one of my all-time favorite movies, Pulp Fiction. Besides that, I had recently seen the movie adaptation of American Psycho (which, like this movie, is an adaptation of a novel by Bret Easton Ellis), and I found it reasonably enjoyable overall. With all these things in mind, I wanted to like The Rules of Attraction. However, I’m afraid my reaction was almost entirely at the opposite extreme. This movie did almost everything wrong. Where do I even start?

This movie, unlike the book, was not set in the 1980’s, opting for present-day instead. That was a mistake for several reasons:

• Ellis’ book had the story taking place in the 1980’s.
• One of this movie’s main characters, Sean Bateman, is the brother of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, which was set in the 1980’s. Their familial connection is obfuscated by setting the stories so far apart timewise.
• It was a different time and culture in the 1980’s. People’s views, practices and motivations were not the same as they are today. Take American Psycho, for example. That movie is just as much about the 1980’s as it is about Patrick Bateman. The political and social aspects of that decade are part of the essence of that movie. As a movie, The Rules of Attraction has none of that. By removing the most essential building block of the story, all this movie has left is a group of annoying, unsympathetic characters, and not much of a point to make.

The story is set in Camden College, a fictional school in New England. The film’s protagonist main character is Sean Bateman (played by James Van Der Beek), who is not only an all-around jerk, but also a drug dealer to boot. Every time he sees his supplier, Rupert (played by Clifton Collins, Jr.), he nearly loses his life, which I’m assuming is supposed to be funny in some way. Early into the movie, Sean meets Lauren (played by Shannyn Sossamon), who is apparently ready to lose her virginity to the right guy. In her case, the right guy is Victor (played by Kip Pardue); the only problem is that she can’t even get Victor’s attention, so she turns her attention to other guys, including Sean. As you might imagine, Sean is quite attracted to Lauren, so much so that he can’t seem to do anything right when he’s around her. He’s also attracted to Lauren’s slutty roommate Lara (played by Jessica Biel), and there are a few awkward scenes to really emphasize that point. Doesn’t sound too complicated, right? Oh, but there’s a twist. (Isn’t there always?) Lauren’s former boyfriend Paul (played by Ian Somerhalder), who is bisexual, is also attracted to Sean, who is straight. And as if poor Sean’s life isn’t already complicated, he’s also receiving notes from a secret admirer.

Is your head hurting yet? Welcome to my hell… So now there are all kinds of questions to be answered; the problem is that the audience isn’t compelled to care about the answers to any of them. Will Sean be able to deal his drugs in peace without being hurt or killed by Rupert? Will Lauren end up losing her virginity? If she does, will the experience be what she hoped? Will Lara end up sleeping with every guy on campus by the end of the movie? Will Sean realize that Paul’s interactions with him are more than just friendly? And if he does, what will he do about it? Will Sean find out who his secret admirer is? And if he does, will it be the person he hoped it would be — or at least the right gender?

Among this movie’s many weaknesses, the biggest one is that it has no likable characters. Everyone in this movie is an idiot. To the movie’s credit, I will say that Sossamon and Somerhalder do an admirable job of playing their respective characters, Lauren and Paul. Those two characters are almost likable at various points, but even they eventually succumb to stupidity. Not even cameos by Faye Dunaway, Swoozie Kurtz and Fred Savage can pull this movie out of the gutter. Some of you may be thinking, “Of course they act like idiots! They’re in college, plus that’s the whole point of the movie/book!” I can accept both points as valid, but consider the example of American Psycho. The main character in that movie was extremely vapid and shallow, but I found it reasonably enjoyable. And how about Pulp Fiction, which featured hitmen and thugs as its main characters? That’s a great movie; I still enjoy watching it. And can you think of a better example than Dumb and Dumber for main characters who act like idiots? But I thought that movie was hilarious. It didn’t matter so much what the characters acted like; it was more about how much incentive the movie gave us to care about what happened.

As I watched The Rules of Attraction, I struggled to find an incentive to care about a single one of the characters, or even the story in general. I just couldn’t do it. The way the movie told the story made it impossible for me to become involved with the characters. As an example, here is only a partial list of awkward and/or disturbing things the movie could have done without:

• Several male characters are shown masturbating.
• A male character, presumably trying to express teen angst, acts like an alien is about to pop out of his stomach.
• Multiple characters attempt suicide.
• A teacher offers a female student a better grade in return for sexual favors.
• A character is raped.

On their own, each of the above items might qualify as an integral element of a more fleshed-out story, but in the context of general college life, they all seem like they’re only there to add to the shock value. They do little or nothing to help us understand the characters better or care about them more; in reality, it’s more like the exact opposite.

In anticipation of the death threats and “you’re a moron” posts that sometimes follow my negative reviews, I’ll try to head some of your concerns off at the pass. I have seen Roger Avary’s previous writing/directing effort, 1994’s Killing Zoe. I thought it was OK, nothing great. It had a gritty-action feel to it, but lacked the necessary wit and depth to be truly enjoyable. As I mentioned earlier, I have also seen the movie adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel, American Psycho, which had its flaws but was reasonably enjoyable overall. But in the case of The Rules of Attraction, almost everything was wrong. The story, the setting, the pacing, the character development… just about everything hit a sour note for me. I don’t think the film was bad for lack of technical competence; Roger Avary and the majority of the cast (especially Sossamon and Collins) have done great work in other productions. Their combined talents were just horribly misused here, in a way that made almost no sense to me.

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By Brian Rentschler

Short version: This movie was so unspeakably awful that I’m almost tempted to sue Artisan Entertainment for pain and suffering. Every scene is either incredibly offensive, awkwardly unfunny or both. Don’t waste your time or money on this unwatchable crapfest.

As a general rule, I try to reserve ratings of 5/5 stars for movies that really hit it out of the park in all aspects. Likewise, I try to reserve ratings of 0/5 stars for movies that have no redeemable qualities to them whatsoever. Most movies are somewhere in between; there’s usually something that you can glean from a movie, no matter how bad it was. However, Boat Trip has received the dubious honor of a zero-star rating from me. There is literally nothing worthwhile about this movie. There are no redeemable qualities whatsoever. This movie is a cinematic nature nugget. It’s not even enjoyable as a “bad movie night” feature. It’s unspeakably awful.

The movie starts out with Jerry Robinson (played by Cuba Gooding, Jr.) taking his girlfriend Felicia (played by Vivica A. Fox) on a romantic date and asking her to marry him. Not only does she say no, but she also breaks up with him and leaves him for another man. Six months later, he still misses her and he hasn’t moved on with his life. (In other words, Jerry is an idiot.) His friend Nick (played by Horatio Sanz) is trying to get him to do something social, so he takes him to a local club. Not long after they arrive, they come across a happy couple who met on a singles cruise. Being the super-geniuses they are, they get the bright idea to go on a singles cruise to meet women. Through an incredibly ridiculous series of events that I won’t go into detail about, they end up taking a cruise, but it’s a gay cruise.

Jerry and Nick take a disturbingly long time to realize that they’re on a gay cruise, but once Jerry realizes what’s going on, he drowns his sorrows in booze. He ends up becoming so drunk that he can’t stand up on his own. He ends up falling into the pool and nearly drowns, but he’s rescued by a beautiful woman named Gabriella (played by Roselyn Sanchez). As it turns out, Gabriella is the dance instructor on the boat. Jerry and Gabriella quickly become good friends, but before Jerry can bust a move, he realizes he has two problems. First, Gabriella has had a string of bad relationships, so she feels more comfortable being around gay men. Second, she thinks Jerry’s gay. (Hmmm… now why would she think that? There are several awkward scenes in the movie to further reinforce her assumption that he’s gay.) Of course, rather than tell her the truth and make this movie all of 15 minutes long, Jerry decides to tell Gabriella he’s gay so she can feel comfortable being around him. (Isn’t that sweet?)

As you might guess, Jerry’s lie quickly spirals out of control, and he has to pile even more lies on top of it to make Gabriella think he’s gay. To make matters worse, she tells him that she’s starting to have feelings for him, but he’s already lied to her about being gay. How does he get out of this mess without completely alienating her? At this point, we have a potential love interest for Jerry, but what about poor Nick? Well, there’s no need to worry, because the Swedish sun tanning team happens to be stranded at sea, and guess which boat ends up rescuing them? (I only wish I were making this up.) Being the genius that he is, Nick tells the women he’s gay, instantly making them feel comfortable around him. He’s immediately attracted to Inga (played by Victoria Silvstedt), but Sonya (played by Lin Shaye), the team’s coach, stands in the way of true love.

As if the movie isn’t bad enough already, it gets even worse. The rest of the movie consists of tasteless and vulgar attempts at humor, mostly centering around gay stereotypes. Jerry keeps up his gay act with Gabriella, eventually appearing in full drag. Nick makes several attempts to meet up with Inga, but what ends up happening instead is downright painful to watch. And to top it all off, Felicia has a change of heart and ends up boarding the boat looking for Jerry. Wanna guess what he looks like when she ends up finding him?

So now Jerry has a choice to make. Should he choose Felicia, who came back to him just like he wanted, or should he choose Gabriella, who is a hottie? And if he chooses Gabriella, how will she react when he tells her he’s been lying to her the entire time they’ve known each other? Regardless of which choice he makes, will lots of ridiculous complications develop to stretch this movie’s length another 15 minutes? Seriously, this movie is only 95 minutes long, but it felt like four hours. You may think you can guess the utterly predictable ending, but this movie sinks to levels of stupidity that I didn’t think were humanly possible. I have heard that a movie from the 60’s called Manos: The Hands of Fate was so bad that it inflicted actual pain and suffering on its viewers. Well, I’ve never seen Manos, but unfortunately I have seen Boat Trip, and it inflicted pain and suffering on me. I’m almost tempted to sue Artisan Entertainment for having to endure such agony. I only saw this because my cable company offered a free preview of the Showtime channel; I have tremendous pity for anyone who actually paid money to see this cinematic cowpie.

This movie was written by Mort Nathan and William Bigelow, and directed by Mort Nathan. Both have experience in TV; Mort Nathan worked on The Golden Girls and William Bigelow worked on The Commish and Murder She Wrote. I could understand a relative newbie writing and/or directing something this putrid, but these guys are seasoned pros. What were they thinking? Most of the cast does a decent job with the inadequate material they are given, with the ironic exceptions of Gooding and Sanz, the two lead actors. Gooding’s career has really hit a downward spiral; Boyz n the Hood and Jerry Maguire are safely in the history books, and with movies like this stinking up his résumé, he’ll have a really tough time being taken seriously as an actor. Roselyn Sanchez was the standout in this movie; why isn’t she getting better roles than this? Did my eyes deceive me, or was that Roger Moore playing a small role as Lloyd, the British gay guy? (Gotta have all the stereotypes covered, old chap…) And even the biggest Will Ferrell fans will have a hard time explaining his cameo in this movie.

As a general rule, I’m not easily offended, but I must say that most of the humor in this movie was so cruel, tasteless and vulgar that I was personally offended by it. This movie was originally shot in 2001, but didn’t hit theaters in the USA until 2003. (If only the studios had tried a little harder to keep it shelved…) I initially thought the point of the movie was supposed to be “gays have feelings too,” but it’s not. With all the tasteless and offensive gay jokes and stereotypes, how can it be? I really don’t think the movie has a point to make. I think it was nothing more than a bunch of poor, misguided souls who collectively thought something was funny when it wasn’t, combined with a healthy dose of actors who needed paychecks. The end result is a cinematic train wreck that should be avoided at all costs.

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By Vic Holtreman

(Yes, that’s 0 stars)

Short version: Don’t waste your time on this pitiful excuse for a time travel movie that is terrible in every way: acting, dialogue, music, and plot.

If at some point over the last few days you’ve done something that you might be feeling guilty about… something particularly mean and nasty…. bad enough that you feel you deserve to be punished in some way…

Then I highly recommend you rent Timeline and force yourself to sit through the entire thing.

I read the book by Michael Crichton when it first came out and actually enjoyed it quite a bit since I’m a huge fan of time travel stories. The one stray thought I had as I read the book, and I remember this quite clearly, was that I felt like I was reading a story that was not written as a novel, but written as a novelization of a movie. For some reason it just felt like he wrote this specifically for the big screen. Unfortunately, if that was his intent, it has been sadly served by this turkey.

The premise is that a Bill Gates kind of guy has tried to create a matter transporter (”which will put Fed-Ex out of business”) but instead has inadvertantly created a time machine. They have no control over the time or place, which due to some random wormhole, has made the only possible destination 14th century France. People go back, get trapped, must be rescued, yadda yadda yadda.

An archaelogist (Billy Connolly, completely wasted here) has been getting information from this Bill Gates character concerning a specific dig site. Information so detailed that ol’ Billy suspects there’s something fishy going on and heads to the lab to investigate. Meanwhile Connolly’s son (Paul Walker, who is… well, I’ll get to that later) who is completely uninterested in things archaeological happens to be visiting. Walker is infatuated with a young digger (Frances O’Connor) to the point of distraction.

So. Dad disappears, son gets all fired up, and the whole archaeological team is invited to go to the secret lab. BTW, for some reason at this dig site, a physicist is part of the team. No, I don’t know why either.

They must go back, find dad, and bring him back. Now considering the character of the guy in charge of the company, I’m not really clear as to why this was so imperative to him, unless this multi-billionare (one assumes) was cowed by one phone call by Walker.

It was obvious this movie was a stinker from the first 5 minutes, I kid you not. Richard Donner directed this, and I have to say the man is hit or miss as far as the movies he’s made. I wanted to blame this movie on the editing, but that’s just one of the many things wrong here. The editing, especially during the first 15 minutes or so was so choppy that I wasn’t really clear on what was going on. The movie cuts between present day (in the lab) and the 14th century, and when it does it’s just plain jarring.

The dialogue is awful, especially as delivered by Paul Walker. How in the heck he was chosen for this film, and why he’s even given star billing when he’s on screen so little time is beyond me. I kept waiting for this to turn into one of those low-brow teen comedies… that’s what Walker brought to this movie. I mean who wrote this thing? (Here’s a bad omen for Ocean’s 12: one of the co-writers of Timeline wrote the screenplay for the upcoming presumed blockbuster.)

The gang has less than 6 hours to find and retrieve Connolly, they’re captured, go through all kinds of trials, and Walker’s character’s main fixation is on the girl. What happened to the heirarchy of “life in danger, sex can wait”? Man….

The music was lame, which made what were supposed to be exciting scenes fall flat. Never have I been so bored by large scale battles. Never. Did I mention this was boring?

What else… an ex-Marine acting like a self-serving wuss, the other ex-marines brought to protect the poor defenseless travelers are done in within minutes of arrival, people who are historians letting their feelings and self-preservation overrule the possibility of totally screwing up the timeline, etc.

The plot holes are really just too numerous to mention. They run the gamut from coincidences beyond belief, down to the last second timing, and here is one of my favorites: They all wear a tiny pendent on a necklace which is their only method of getting back. Now I ask you, if you had something which your life depended upon, would you wear this on the outside of all your clothing or would you tuck it under everything and have it hanging against your chest? Of course! You’d wear it on the outside where it could be lost, stolen, grabbed from your neck, or whatever.

It hurts my head to even write this review because it means I have to think about the movie again.

You have been warned.

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