by MARK SLUTSKY

Oh Richard Donner, how far you have fallen. The once-venerable action director, responsible for the first two Superman movies, The Omen and The Goonies hasn't exactly been on a hot streak lately - check the diminishing returns of his Lethal Weapon series, all of which he directed, which have descended into total self-parody. But you expect at least a certain level of competence from the man, which is why Timeline, his latest, is so disheartening in its incompetence and made-for-TV looks.

Adapted from a Michael Crichton novel, Timeline tells the muddy and confusing story of an archeologist, played by Billy Connolly, who goes back in time to 14th-century France, the era he's studying, via a magical machine invented by David Thewlis. (Thewlis plays an American super-scientist who may or may not be evil; the uncertainty doesn't come from my desire not to spoil the plot, but rather the fact that I was having a hard time figuring out exactly what the guy was supposed to be up to myself.)

For some reason which is never made clear, Connolly gets stuck in the past, and Thewlis recruits his son (Paul Walker) and students to go get him. After stepping into a cheap-looking time machine that seems to be made out of bathroom mirrors, they end up in the medieval days of yore and run around a lot trying to rescue him and save a noblewoman. This leads to the movie's highlight, with a couple of neat-looking catapults going off.

Maybe the most depressing thing about Timeline is its production values; the man who gave us the magnificent destruction of Krypton has made a movie that would be comfortably at home on TV at 8 p.m. on a Saturday night, alongside the new Outer Limits and Psi Factor. Medieval France resembles a patch of woods behind somebody's cottage in the Laurentians (the movie was actually filmed in Quebec), and the time travel sequences involve nothing more than a big fan blowing the actors' hair back, and a lot of screaming. A true stinker, Timeline is best left in the past and forgotten.

Timeline is now playing

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