TIMELINE (2003) ** Billy Connolly carries the first twenty minutes or so, with a big fat beard and that easy Scottish charm of his. It's great fun, but I'm glad to say that they change gears and directions before it, inevitably, wears thin. It turns out that Michael Crichton apparently didn't put anything in the novel that would trump Billy's tomfoolery, but it's a pleasantly lite melange of time-travel and worm holes and corporate bureaucrats and scientific geniuses, and information on a need-to-know basis. Which is to say that I suspect it's a credible enough book, and many people would enjoy reading it. I'm not at all convinced that I'm one of them (though might have been, thirty years ago)…I'm more inclined towards bemusedly contemplating the simple stroke of having a "British behaving badly, in France" production with so much Scottish influence. That'll show 'em, the heathens! (something like that) It's an enjoyable film without anything threatening greatness, and it reminds you how lucky we are to live in the times that we do, which is a point not made often enough.
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