The Time Machine

By TIM WATKIN

(Herald rating: * * * )

Bruce Willis does guns and terrorists, Tom Hanks does lovable yuppies, and Russell Crowe provokes people. Guy Pearce's thing seems to be time and memory.

But in contrast to last year's marvellous, brain-stretchingMemento, Time Machine invites you to lie back and enjoy the ride. The only thing to be stretched here is time; and occasionally your incredulity.

Pearce is scientist Alexander Hartdegen in this second film from H.G. Wells' groundbreaking novel. After a tragedy at the start of the movie, he won't take "there's nothing you can do about it" for an answer and obsessively seeks a way to go back in time to change things for the better.

The profound questions tumble out: Can we escape our fate? Will technology condemn or save us? Without a past, who are we? Wells' century-old questions about where science might lead us are as pertinent as ever.

But if you go to the movie for a thrill and a chase, you'll be relieved to know that director Simon Wells - the great-grandson of the author - ignores all such profundities and gets on with the action sequences and special effects.

After efforts to build condos on the Moon end in environmental disaster, Hartdegen has a chance to redeem his own mischance by rescuing a future - the year 802701 - that looks and sounds like an episode of Survivor. There, humanity has evolved into two species - the above-earth Eloi, who are a human version of Ewoks, and the underground Morlock, which resemble the Planet of the Apes cast shaved of fur.

Actually, the movie is much like Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake. It completely misses the point and power of the original story, but is pacy and pretty. The time-travel special effects are stunning.

A drawn-looking Pearce plays a shallow role well, but earnestly. He should have looked to his co-star Irons, who plays the nasty Uber-Morlock. He knows how to ham it up and hit the note. He has some good lines about past and future and being "the inescapable result of your tragedy". But they have no context and are answers without questions.

In the end you don't know whether all Hartdegen's time travel has made one jot of difference. The journey has looked good and offered a few thrills and spills, but like Hartdegen, each time he steps out of his machine you don't really know where you are.

Cast: Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons Director: Simon Wells Rating: M (medium level violence) Running time: 96 mins Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas