Speaking of time travel, I purchased the Time Machine (2002) DVD this weekend and watched it. I had not seen it before, hadn't read any reviews about it, nor had I read the book by H.G. Wells. This brief review may contain some *SPOILERS* so if you haven't seen it, and don't want to ruin the movie (any more than the writers did) don't read it.

Overall, I thought the movie was pretty dumb. It starts off very nice, in late 19th century New York City, and has our hero suffering a great tragedy. He spends the next 4 years engrossed in his work and dwelling on the past. After a failed attempt to rewrite the past and undo the death of his fiance, he decides to head off into the future to find out why the past cannot be changed. After a brief stop in 2030 and 2037, he bumps his head and wakes up 800,000 years in the future. According to the story, the post-apocalyptic human race has evolved into both a group of grizzly hunters called Morlocks, and a welfare-state of lazy, do-nothings called Eloi, that are young, nubile, and beautiful.

Thanks to some amazing archeology by the Eloi, they have managed to dig up some old Manhattan street signs and teach themselves the English language; something most Manhattan-ites of today have yet to master. As smart as they may sound, the beautiful young Eloi, an obvious pandering to pre-pubescent teens, are completely unwilling to fend off attacks by the evil and very ugly Morlock. After one such attack, the Eloi simply shrug their shoulders and go back to lazing around like it's a Sunday afternoon. Witnessing this, our nerdy workaholic inventor suddenly takes his shirt off, sprouts muscles, and transforms into a bona fide last action hero. Yes, our 19th century professor who has never spent a day in the gym, single handedly out-runs, out-climbs, out-fights, and out-smarts thousands of years of evolution to save the day.

While I found the special effects to be excellent, it just wasn't enough to carry the movie. If I had a time machine, I'd take my ninety-six minutes back.