Starring Billy Connolly, Anna Friel. Written by Jeff Maguire, George
Nolfi based on the novel by Michael Crichton. Directed by Richard
Donner. (PG) 119 min.
Poor old Middle Ages. What schoolchildren used to call The Dark Ages
was rebranded with a name that implies both mediocrity and a slow slide
towards senility, and the era still remains a historical blur in most
people's minds. At the movies, the medieval times are usually presented
as just that: Medieval Times, full of knights, tights and fights. Timeline fits seamlessly into this ignoble tradition.
Michael Crichton, research king par excellence,
tried to do something a bit different in his time-travel novel upon
which this film is based, but almost all his innovations -- such as
having 14th-century characters actually speaking the French, Occitan or
Latin of the period -- have been dumped wholesale by director Richard
Donner of the Lethal Weapon franchise.
In the film, a
group of archeologists travel back to 1357 France using technology
developed by a secretive high-tech company. Initially, their mission is
to rescue Professor Johnston (Billy Connolly), who had failed to return
from an earlier mission, but when the group arrives on the eve of a
crucial battle in the Hundred Years War, they find themselves messing
with history. Along the way, two romances develop: the professor's son,
Chris (Paul Walker), gets it on with a student, Kate (Frances
O'Connor), while the Scottish academic André (hottie Gerard Butler)
hits on the local lady of the manor, Claire (Anna Friel), who
fortunately takes a decidedly modern view of relationships.
This is a chaotic and baffling picture that doesn't give a
toss about knights on horseback except as handy items to stick arrows
and swords into. (And if you're going to have anachronisms, such as
Frenchwomen who roam the country unsupervised and get into liplocks
with random Scots, at least present them with joyful aplomb, as Brian
Helgeland did in
A Knight's Tale.) The action consists mainly
of groups of people being captured, escaping and then hiding, all the
while conducting hurried shouting matches. Mass confusion doesn't even
begin to describe this movie -- which is ironic, considering that the
decision to make the 14th-century characters speak modern English and
French was undoubtedly made for reasons of clarity. The past is a
foreign country? In
Timeline, it's not even a foreign language.