0 to 800,000 years in 1.2 seconds.

Randolph Carter

SCORE: B-

Plot:  Right after getting engaged--I mean within seconds--a clueless professor (Guy Pearce) is mugged and his fiancé shot dead.  The grief-stricken professor develops a time machine to travel back in time and rectify the situation.  When this doesn’t produce the desired results, he spends the rest of the film gallivanting all over future history.  Eventually clueless professor ends up in the remote future where he chats with Elric (Jeremy Irons), throws down with a few cool-looking Morlocks, trashes his time machine for good, and simmers down with a hot-looking aborigine babe.  Fiancé?  What fiancé?

Commentary:  Yet another film in which I expecting to be punished and wound up being pleasantly surprised.  Granted, this film could have been a whole lot better, but it wasn’t a horrible film by any means.  Special effects were quite nice (especially in their handling of the Morlocks) and even the time machine looked almost believable (as far as time machines can look believable), yet the far future societies of doe-eyed, peaceful above ground dwellers being fodder for the C.H.U.D. like Morlocks was a bit hokey.  However, I will say the Morlocks, in all their mindless evil, rival any baddy out of the first two Lord of the Rings films.

More appropriate title: Fear of Commitment, or, Chillin’ with Elric.