Updated 'Time Machine' dumbs down good material

Ask yourself how incestuous Hollywood filmmaking has become, and answer with the evidence.

The new remake of "The Time Machine" resembles the 1960 version of "The Time Machine" less than it does the 2001 remake of "Planet of the Apes." Must all such films pour from the same blender•

The second halves of the two remakes are just about indistinguishable, right down to the over-reliance on hyper-active editing to compensate for poorly shot action sequences, plus lighting and color so gloomy the screen should be equipped with track lighting.

"The Time Machine" isn't just good material. It's great stuff, obscured here by a dumbing-down process that defeats its ingenious progenitor.

It is undoubtedly too much to expect that the social and political manifestations of class warfare of the 1894-95 novel by H.G. Wells (1866-1946) would thrive as a theme in a modern sci-fi action film. As it is, a gabby preview audience didn't settle down until the special effects kicked in around the half-hour mark.

They'd already missed some of the most clever parts - a reference to the novel and to the 1960 film, as well as to a (nonexistent) Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation.

The novel began in 1895 in London (the new film starts then, too, but in Manhattan) and eventually skips forward to the year 802701, by which determinism has effected permanent social change.

The British Victorian leisure class has devolved into the compliant Eloi, and the working class of the late 19th century has become the subterranean, cannibalistic, mutant Morlocks. The struggle is reduced, much as it was in the 1960 version, to cliffside-dwelling flower children hiding from ape-like hunters.

"Those who fight back are taken first," says one Eloi, explaining their lack of resistance to being dinner.

Wells identified his central character as the Time Traveler. The traveler became George in the '60 version. Here, he's Alexander Hartdegen, a professor at Columbia University, a physicist-inventor and a correspondent of Albert Einstein.

He's played by "Memento's" Guy Pearce, who is so gaunt you can believe absent-mindedness alone accounts for his malnutrition.

Best friend Philby, formerly spelled Filby and played by "The Full Monty's" plump Mark Addy, looks askance at one of Alex's inventions - a battery-operated toothbrush.

After seeing fiancee Emma (Sienna Guilloy) killed twice and learning he cannot rewrite history by replaying it and running corrections, Alex skips ahead to 2030. He finds there a phase of Lunar Leisure Living ("certain restrictions apply"), where most New Yorkers ride bicycles and one vapid observer refers to Alex's retro wardrobe. (Surely, the trendy over-use of "retro" will have ended by 2010.)

A break-up of a close-hovering moon in 2037 will turn New York into a martial law wasteland, a cataclysm that leads to the two-race society of the distant future Alex visits next.

Here he meets the lovely Eloi named Mara (Samantha Mumba) - this film's Weena - and the albino uber-Morlock (Jeremy Irons), who explains, "I am the inescapable result of you."

What a trip to lay on a visitor from 800,000 years ago. They couldn't just force him to watch "Queen of the Damned"?

John Logan's screenplay, which is based on the 1960 screenplay by David Duncan, inexplicably changes the ending, throwing out a part that generates goose bumps every time.

But it gets a few things right. Phyllida Law, Emma Thompson's off-screen mother, has moments as Alex's housekeeper. Irons plays so efficiently he nearly disguises the purely declamatory nature of his role.

The art direction of a wintry Manhattan in 1899 is gorgeous. And special effects in the time travel sequence are bound to enthrall.

Director Simon Wells is the great grandson of H.G. Wells. Maybe Simon is so much a product of the modern movie culture that he subscribes to unnecessary revisionism. Or maybe he thought by getting involved he could temper the quantity of compromises.

Alan Young, who played Filby 42 years ago, appears in a small role here. You've a faster eye than I if you can spot him.

Director: Simon Wells
Stars: Guy Pearce, Samantha Mumba, Jeremy Irons
MPAA Rating: PG-13, for intense sequences of action violence