I love time travel movies - although it's probably fairer to say I love the idea of time travel movies because I am usually frustrated at how they are so frequently poorly done. I don't expect the filmmakers to posit ground-breaking theorems that would realistically explain HOW time travel works, I just expect them to be logical and careful as they play in the arena. I was shocked I had missed this film - based as it is on the seminal Bradbury short story that explored (and coined) the butterfly effect of alterations in the past having repercussions in the future. But this film is a blandly soggy mess; seemingly the product of some serious over-development as a clever short story was forced into all the "hit film" boxes the producers could check off. Part Sci Fi, part Indiana Jones, part Jurassic Park; but what they left out of the equation were logic and intelligence. A little research turned up the production problems that resulted in the horrible digital effects (basically just pre-viz or old video game quality) so I won't trash them further (although in ANY world the actors painfully "fake-walking" in place while the green screen image scrolls behind them would be laughable) but the blatantly stupid way the whole butterfly effect is dealt with ("Time Waves will look cool!" someone must have said) and having first rate actors spew third rate dialogue does nothing but condemn the film to the heap of Time-Travel failures. I bet the director and actors wish they had a time machine so they could go back and reconsider their involvement with this.
Review of A Sound of Thunder
