selena-71096 Just like someone had already said the first 15 min. were somewhat watchable, minus pretense of the "era" and sub-par performances including children. From 15 years forward it is all downhill. I stopped watching on 57th min. into the film, just could not take it any longer. An absurd in every boring sleepy scene. They aged a mother too much. She could not have looked totally gray and old just after 15 years when she was very young in the beginning. Did women go to bars in early 40s to drink alone? The "bartender" cracked me up, or was it a waitress that said "One of those days?". Yeah a woman stole some tools from University? Give me a break. In short, all you will see in this movie is a couple of guys and a woman with screwdrivers in a so called lab and some absurd characters and meaningless dialogues in between.

Eric M. Van MILD SPOILERS MARKED BELOW.This movie's strengths are many. The premise, although ultimately science fantasy, is immediately engaging: what if someone had devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics (all possible realities, deriving from every possible choice, exist in parallel worlds) back in the 1920's, and then gone on from there to invent a time machine? The would-be time traveler who wants to undo an event in their own past is a story we've seen before, but the essentials of this version are quite well done.The film is beautifully designed and shot (arthouse fans will not find it too slow) and very well acted. The screenplay is full of quality moments.So why is this only a 6? Well, to begin with, the screenplay is also full of clichés. But it has a much bigger problem than that: the main character's behavior and motivation, which are the sole engine of the plot, are somewhat unconvincing for an ordinary person, and entirely unconvincing for a scientist.VERY BROAD SPOILERS FOLLOWIf you advise someone not to do something rash or dangerous or wisely decline to do it yourself), and they do it anyway, and it indeed ends badly ... most people will feel remorse -- remorse that they did not do a better job of explaining their concerns. What rarely happens is that they *entirely blame themselves*, to the point of obsession. It stretches all credulity (at least for me) that a brilliant scientist (hence, by nature, an unusually rational thinker) would do so. You don't really want your genius character being told by friends that "it wasn't your fault" when that is in fact INCREDIBLY OBVIOUS.This movie does this twice; one is the engine of the plot, and the other creates a plot pivot.Note that this might have worked if our hero had been portrayed as a general emotional wreck who just happened to be a physics whiz. But he's not: he goes about pursuing his obsession in a cool, rational way that is entirely believable for a brilliant scientist. It's only the source of that obsession that is out of character, fatally so.The pity is, it's easy to imagine how the plot could have been kept intact by giving our hero more complex, more interesting, and much more believable motivations.Oh, and the movie also ends up incorporating a classic time-travel paradox without seeming to address it at all. And there's a huge loose end in the plot that, I think, cries out for more closure.END SPOILERSThe first thing I did after watching this film is check to see who the producers were. My suspicions were correct: the screenwriter, and the director. IOW, no one with an objective take on the film. If I had a time machine, I'd go back a few years and give them a whole set of notes on the screenplay. That's what a good producer does. The creative team here is clearly quite talented; if they find someone who really knows film (and especially knows the genre they're working in) to produce their next effort, it will be one to watch for.

zif ofoz This flick should have been entitled - "The Cookie Jar, The Hula- Hoop, and The Old Piano".This movie is just plain goofy! Actually the first part with the children at play in the countryside is interesting. You get a good look into each character and their friendship with one another. After the story jumps forward 15 years the plot becomes a partially science fiction comedy thriller thing. As I was watching I could not help laughing each time I saw the instrument for time travel. What a hoot! An old cookie jar, a metal hula hoop thing, and an old upright piano, some electric dryer vent tubing and a collection of wires. I thought, 'really', they expect the viewer to go with this?And then those long scenes of the adult girl and boys working and just being with one another. Completely boring! I actually felt sorry for the actors having to put their 'all' into this goofy story of reality, time travel, greed, and love. And it all comes to a head at that infamous well. Sorry Director U'Ren this one is a no no.

Liam Despite the low budget, the cinematography and the score are simply sumptuous. It is certainly enjoyable to watch, even if, in the final analysis, it lacks substance. There is a scene early on, a garden party by the side of a river, where the ribbons in Victoria's hair stand out with shocking luminosity. Combined with the orchestration, it certainly looks a bigger budget film than it is.But it doesn't feel that way. It feels constrained - perhaps by the cost of the props, of the settings, and of the time and resources available. The production company is known as "Sculptures of Dazzling Complexity" - but the story is all too simplistic, and while setting it in Cambridge between the wars allows that simplicity some breathing space, it still lacks the depth of true emotion that might be expected of a simpler time and place. The characters, for me, fail to live up to the film's title - they are rather too 2D. The adults have no more substance than the excellent child actors. Walking in to a Cambridge Physics lecture and asking the (under?) graduates there "Who likes Physics?" is a rather obvious example, but more fundamentally, I fail to feel the driving force behind Stephen's obsession, and I want - NEED to see a more fundamental tension between Conrad and Stephen, even if this is not overt.You might suppose that I might be snobbish about the "Time Machine" itself, but it has a certain charm, reminiscent of something by HG Wells, and being appropriate for something very much the production of a mad professor in a shed at the end of the garden. Yes, there is an element of early Dr Who about an image of biplane's appearing in the smoke filled jar of the device, and yes - it's a pianola, and yes, the gateway DOES rather look like a hula hoop (thus beating the Hudsucker Proxy to the invention!) but hey, it's fun, at least! But the are holes in the plot that are far from fun, and which a bigger, better resourced film might have avoided. Such as what was Robert's motivation for travelling back in time? How long was Victoria in the well, if she had time to scratch out a message? Why the dinner party and ball - did they have some costumes they simply had to use? And if Conrad went first, how did he avoid Robert's fate? Did Stephen and Conrad together waltz their way through the labyrinth between worlds? And quite WHAT is Victoria saying when she says farewell to the Professor? And then there is the multi-verse approach. I don't object to this particularly, but it weakens the film to set it NOT in our version. And for the differences to be so trivial and farcical as calling an apple an orange? Better to leave the whole "99% sure" theory unproven, I'd suggest! So, a brave effort, and not by any means unworthy, but if you want a time-travel Sci-Fi film that actually challenges the viewer to keep up, I'd watch Primer instead.