As I have many, many times before, I must start this review with my "Haven't Been There, Haven't Done That" Disclaimer. I never saw the original The Time Machine, nor have I read the book, played the video game, or eaten the breakfast cereal. Considering the fact that many people consider me to be a pop culture whiz kid and literati, I find that I make this disclaimer with disturbing regularity. More disturbing, however, is the fact that I even need to make this disclaimer.

I can't remember what the last non-remake movie that I saw was, but I'll probably be reminded in another month or two when a remake of it comes out. For cryin' out loud, Hollywood, if you can't think of a new idea for a movie, you could at least steal one from the Japanese, put a new name on it, and market it as original? You know, like Disney does?

Because I didn't know anything about the canon of The Time Machine, I thought that it would be prudent to consult a time travel expert to help me write my review, so as to not insult the franchise fans. I'm not sure how much of this is considered spoiler, so continue with caution if you fear that you may change your own future by not seeing a movie because some asshead ruined it for you.

Marcus: Gee Mr. Peabody! Thanks for helping me write my review!

Peabody: Indubitably. Now let's step into the Wayback Machine for a closer look.

Marcus: A closer look at what, Mr. Peabody?

Peabody: Well the beginning of the movie, of course.

Marcus: Gosh, Mr. Peabody! We must have gone pretty far into the past! Tommy Lee Jones looks so young and emaciated and bony!

Peabody: That's not Tommy Lee Jones, that's Guy Pearce. He's kind of a poor man's Tom Cruise with a splash of Johnny Depp thrown in, and then starved for six months.

Marcus: Wow! Look at all of those scientific formulas he's frantically scribbling on all those chalkboards! Somebody could get lost in all of that!

Peabody: Of course! It is the Equation of the Body Snatchers.

Marcus: Okay, you're not in Frostbite Falls anymore, Snoopy. We don't do that kind of shtick here.

Pearce: No! That's all wrong! I've got to erase that with my sleeve! I'm a wild thinker, an intellectual! I don't care about my own personal grooming when there's science to do! Ah, that's it! Seven raised to the third power TIMES triangle DIVIDED by meaningless letter variable!

Fred Flintstone Guy: Yabba dabba doo! Hey old pal, aren't you forgetting something?

Pearce: Oh yes, times two, times two, divided by four. Brilliant!

Marcus: Fred Flinstone is right. Guy Pearce has been working so hard on his crazy science that he's forgotten all about how he has to go see his girlfriend, just like Robin Williams did in that movie with the flubber!

Peabody: Fred MacMurray.

Marcus: Huh?

Pearce: Ah! Here I am, walking to the park to see my sweetheart. Yes sir, besides science, there's only one thing that I love in this world, and that's her. My girlfriend. She's the one thing, outside of science, of course, that makes my world go round. FLOWERS! I'd better buy her some flowers.

Marcus: Gosh, Mr. Peabody, why is he making such a big deal about buying flowers?

Peabody: Well, partially because she told him to bring her flowers, but mostly just as a running thematic element.

Pearce: Whoa! Check that out! It's a motorcar! I've seen lights and phones, but not this! This is entirely new!

Motorcar driver: Damned if I can figure this thing out. It seems like half the time it's not working, and the other half of the time it's running over people's girlfriends and killing them.

Pearce: Come again?

Motorcar driver: I will, in about seven paragraphs.

Pearce: Hello sweet girlfriend!

Girlfriend: Where's my flowers, bitch?!

Pearce: I'm sorry, I got distracted. There was a guy over there with a primitive automobile, and even though I'm going to invent a freakin' time machine next week, I still thought it was pretty balls out fascinating, and...

Girlfriend: You're cute when you're obsessing over science.

Pearce: Well, hey! It's what I do!

Marcus: Aww. This is like that part in The Nutty Professor where the chick tells Eddie Murphy that he doesn't have to be Buddy Love, she really loves him for who he is.

Peabody: Jerry Lewis.

Marcus: Wha?

Girlfriend: So, Pearce, you wanted to tell me something?

Pearce: I feel ill. There's something terribly wrong with me. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I feel like I'm totally going to hurl.

Marcus: Me too, and I'm only watching the movie!

Peabody: Quiet, you.

Pearce: So anyway, wanna marry me?

Girlfriend: Oh, feigning grotesque illness is such a romantic way to propose! Of course I'll marry you!

Pearce: Well here's a big fat engagement ring! I know it's not a diamond, but I figured why waste all that money on an expensive ring when flowers are the story motif that we've decided to run with?

Mugger: Hi, everybody! Give me all of your money!

Pearce: Okay, you can have all of my money, just don't shoot my girlfriend, okay?

Mugger: BLAM BLAM!

Pearce: Hey!

Peabody: Now it's four years later. Pearce has spent all of this time writing increasingly intricate pretend formulas on a series of chalkboards, spanning higher and higher up the wall.

Marcus: For cryin' out loud, Pearce. This is all very visually stimulating and all, but haven't you ever heard of paper?

Fred Flintstone: Yabba dabba doo! Pearce, you sure haven't been around much in the past four years. What gives?

Pearce: Ellipsing.

Marcus: In that movie where the Flintstones meet the Jetsons, did they think that we wouldn't notice that George Jetson makes up his own catch phrase just for that movie so that he could compete with Fred? Oooba dooba? What's up with that crap? And why did both of these otherwise rational men decide to revert to non-sensical baby talk when making first contact with a being from another time? I mean "Yabba dabba, friend?" "Oooba dooba, friend?" What is that shit all about...

Peabody: Oh no you don't! No meaningless tangents in this review! Stay on target, boy.

Fred Flintstone: You're so wild and untamed! It's kind of like you were at the beginning of the movie, except now you aren't shaving. No sir, I don't like it. Stop beating yourself up. It's not your fault that your girlfriend is dead. I mean, sure you took her for a walk in Central Park at night and gave her valuable jewelry, but that's no reason to think that you're responsible for a mugger robbing and killing her. There's nothing that you can do about it.

Pearce: Oh yes there is! I could totally do something about it if I had a TIME MACHINE!

Fred Flintstone: Yeah, I guess, sure. So, what are you working on, anyway?

Pearce: Certainly not a TIME MACHINE!

Fred Flintstone: You're acting weird. Almost as if you're up to something.

Pearce: Nope. No TIME MACHINE!

Fred Flintstone: Well, anyway... see ya later!

Pearce: ... or sooner... TIME MACHINE!

Pearce: Without further ado, let's make with the going back in time!

Marcus: Ooooh, whiz-bang special effects, but off screen! At this point I guess they're just leaving it to our imagination to fill in the details, like Gus Van Sant did in Psycho.

Peabody: Alfred Hitchcock.

Marcus: Er...

Pearce: Ah, excellent! It's four years ago again! I can still defer my student loans! But first, I've got to go to the park and save my girlfriend from past-idiot me and his mugger-bait ring!

Doc Brown: Pearce! Future-present-now you is going to see your past-present-before self and cause a major temporal paradox, and destroy the very fabric of the universe!

Peabody: Jesus... not this clown again.

Girlfriend: Hey! You're early! And you still haven't brought me any flowers, asshole.

Pearce: I'm so happy to see you! You're not dead and I didn't kill you! Let's get the hell out of the park.

Marcus: Yeah, before you run into past-present-two-scenes-ago you and have to do split screen gags like they did with Lindsay Lohan in The Parent Trap.

Peabody: Hayley Mills.

Marcus: Whatever.

Pearce: There. Ah. The city. Safety. Excellent. Now you just wait right there in the middle of the street and I'll go to the flower shop buy you those flowers that you've always wanted. Right there. Right in the street. In the middle. And don't move.

Marcus: This can only lead to tears.

Pearce: Flower shop guy, give me a million flowers. Awesome ones. For my girlfriend who totally isn't dead anymore.

Girlfriend: Ack! I am hit with a motorcar! I am slain!

Motorcar Driver: Well it's not like I didn't warn him.

Pearce: This sucks! Dammit! Now I see that no matter what, I can't go back in time and keep my girlfriend from totally biting it tonight.

Fred Flintstone: I'm sorry that your girlfriend died again. Or... for the first time, if you're me, and you don't know about the time she got shot, on account of the whole time traveling thing and... ah forget it.

Marcus: Oh yeah, two tries. Big whoop. You'll NEVER be able to stop this from happening. Better give up now. Come on, dude. Even a baseball batter fails three times before he has to go back to the bench. Quitter.

Pearce: Well, since this back in time thing didn't work out, I'm going to try forward in time next.

Marcus: Hoo hoo! Isn't this really going to royally psychologically screw past-present-original Pearce tomorrow! Okay, so he goes to the park to propose, but his girlfriend isn't there. He comes to find out that she left the park with a MAN who WASN'T HIM! This tears him apart emotionally on the inside, until the next day when he runs into Fred Flintstone, who says, "Um, dude, that totally was you that she left the park with. Don't you remember when you were all grieving after she got hit by a car?" Then he'll be all "She was HIT by a CAR?!" Haha! Oh what a tangled web we weave.

Peabody: Here's where it starts to get messy. We'd better jump forward into the Spoiler Lounge.

Pearce: Alright then, let's light this baby up. Future, ho!

Marcus: Ooooh! Time lapse! Let me get out in 1978, I want to invest in Microsoft.

Pearce: Ah, the year 2030. I'm going to stop off here, because I'm fascinated by sexy chicks in bicycle pants.

Talking billboard: Visit beautiful the moon. Wouldn't you like to live on the moon? Well now, since it's the future and all, you can. You can get your own scenic condo in central the moon for less than you think! Yes sir, living on the moon is grand.

Marcus: Um... he did say 2030, right? They'll be colonizing the moon twenty-eight years from today? A today where we don't even have flying cars or personal death rays? Apparently there's going to be another Kennedy in the White House in our near future. Goddamn it, this is just like in Planet of the Apes where Marky Mark worked on that deep space station in 2029.

Peabody: Charlton Heston

Marcus: Oh, shut up.

Peabody: This is the inside of the New York Public Library, in the future.

Marcus: Where are all the books?

Peabody: Haha! You think Americans can still read in 2030.

Teacher on Field Trip: And if you kids don't behave, I'm going to RESEQUENCE your DNA!

Marcus: Ooooh! What a futuristic threat! Let me try one! Mr. Peabody, if you don't behave, I'm going to TERRAPUNCH your HYPERCARDING face in!

Peabody: Very good, boy. Now hush, before I cyberpiss on your technofucking leg.

Pearce: Hello, crazy man in period clothes here, looking for some technology to blow my mind. Anybody home?

Glass Orlando Jones: Hello! I'm a thinkin' machine super computer. I know everything in the world, plus two.

Pearce: Say it!

Glass Orlando Jones: Is there anything in my vast, incomprehensible realm of knowledge that you would like to learn?

Pearce: Say it!

Glass Orlando Jones: I can say many things, drawn from every page of every volume of sacred and secular text ever committed to the page...

Pearce: Say it!

Glass Orlando Jones: *sigh* Okay. Make seven, up yours!

Pearce: Hahaha!

Glass Orlando Jones: Ugh.

Pearce: Okay, now tell me about Time Machines.

Glass Orlando Jones: Oh, you mean the book by H.G. Wells?

Pearce: No, I mean, like, for real time machines.

Glass Orlando Jones: Okay, but I think you'd be really interested in the Wells book, since it's more or less ABOUT YOU! I mean, Jesus, what are we trying to prove here by referencing the book we're based on? It's just stupid.

Pearce: Well the 7-Up guy was absolutely no help. I'm going to go farther into the future to see if I can get answers from Hallie Kate Eisenberg instead.

Marcus: Can't he just leave well enough alone? I mean, he already knows that he can't change the past, so by going into the future, isn't he just opening himself up to a Cassandra Complexed life of learning of great catastrophes that he is powerless to prevent?

Panicked Post-Future Police Officer: HOLY SHIT! THE MOON IS EXPLODING!

Marcus: Like, perhaps THAT, for example.

Pearce: Wham! I am unconscious. Wake me up before you go go in 800,000 years.

Marcus: It's a good thing this movie wasn't directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, or else this would have all taken place in real time.

Peabody: Zing!

Pearce: Aaaarrg. Nothing like a good nap through a few chapters of geologic time to really make you feel crampy. Hey, I'm in a sci-fi fantasy painting of a treehouse! Neat!

Marcus: Cool! It's all artsy-woodsy forest dwelling stuff, like something Peter Jackson would have put in Lord of the Rings.

Peabody: Ralph Bakshi.

Marcus: Okay, I'm calling foul on that one.

Feral Kid: Bo nongo mo fringo key lime pie wagga namo.

Pearce: Good day, let us discuss this situation like rational personages, shall we?

Feral Kid: Gron blorg nosto fran dresher tord norgo.

Pearce: Yes, that's all delightful, but if you haven't noticed, I'm not going to acknowledge that we don't speak the same language.

Threatening Looking Tribal Guy: Mufasa tard gran blognoggle ford focus vlerd nagel!

Another of Same: Sinclaid natalie imbrulia flanderblanz tofurkey!

Marcus: Hey! How about that! The filmmakers actually took into account that the destruction of all Earth civilization as we know it, plus 800,000 years, actually means that these folks won't speak English. I'm impressed!

Feral Chick: Hey, what's happening, Pearce? I learned how to speak perfect English from broken bits of ancient urban signage, even though said signs were typically written with truncated grammar and phonetic abbreviations.

Pearce: That's amazing!

Feral Chick: Not really. I mean, everybody from your time period learned how to speak fluent prehistoric Zambian from fragments of Cenozoic cave paintings, right? In fact, all of us learned your language in school.

Tribal Guy: Hey, now that you mention it, I DO speak English!

Different Tribal Guy: Me too! Wild!

Marcus: D'oh!

Pearce: This whole Ewok village adventure thing is fun. I am very much enjoying myself here, and I never considered to ask, even for a second, where my time machine is, and if I could perchance use it to return home.

Feral Chick: Hey how do you like my pagongs?

Pearce: They're great! I'd like to stick my face between them and go BBLBLBLLBLBLBLBLL!

Feral Chick: No, that's our word for "flowers."

Pearce: Christ. Always with the girls and the freakin' flowers...

Marcus: OHHHH! I GET it! This NEW girl likes FLOWERS just like his OLD DEAD girlfriend did. Perhaps he can find FUTURE-PRESENT love with her! OW! My SKULL HURTS from where you just HIT ME over the HEAD with that!

Pearce: By the way, were are all of the old people?

Feral Chick: Don't ask.

Pearce: So, what, you've got some kind of a Logan's Run thing going on then?

Village: Ack! We're all being killed by giant psycho mole people!

Marcus: Don't be afraid! You just need somebody who can talk to the animals, like Eddie Murphy in Dr. Dolittle!

Peabody: Rex Harrison.

Marcus: Okay Dogbert, that's really starting to get annoying.

Feral Chick: Oh no! I am kidnapped by giant scary evil terror puppet man! Bye!

Pearce: I'm going to go and rescue Feral Chick, but first I'll need to consult with Glass Orlando Jones again.

Glass Orlando Jones: Yeah, I still exist. I've got an almost Douglas Adamsian way of remaining both intact and operational over hundreds of millennia. Plus now I've got this whole Doctor-from-Voyager-expanded-beyond-my-original-programming thing going on.

Pearce: Great! So can you tell me where all those monsters took my woman?

Glass Orlando Jones: I don't have to. Just follow the monster sounds.

Pearce: Hmm, seems obvious enough. I guess that's why you're the receptacle of all worldly knowledge, and I'm the moron who invents a time machine and then goes to the worst place this side of grunge.

Marcus: I'm so tired of writing this review. It's not even a review! It's like some kind of stupid fanfic that makes no sense.

Peabody: Come along, boy. We're nearly to the end.

Spooky Zombie Dude: And so you see, Pearce, my people eat your people. It's the circle of life. Hunters, prey. Just because we're ugly and can't go outside in sunlight, you automatically assume that we're the bad guys.

Pearce: So, you're not the bad guys?

Spooky Zombie Dude: Oh, well of course we are. I'm just sayin', when you assume, you make an ass of you and me. That's all I'm sayin'.

Pearce: Oh, in that case, let's fight!

Marcus: They're fighting in the time machine! Whilst traveling through time! That can't be safe. Why, what if somebody should...

Spooky Zombie Dude: Ah bugger all, I've gone outside of the sphere of time-travelularity and I've rapidly aged into bones. I am now dead.

Pearce: Woo! Now that that's taken care of, lemme turn this thing off. What the... holy original ending of Army of Darkness! The whole world is all apocalypsed up now, and it's probably all my fault for killing the zombie. Christ. Have you ever just had one of those space-time continuums? Well, back in time to fix this mess... again.

Feral Chick: Hey! You came back in time again to save me! Fortunately you came back early enough that I'm not yet eaten or raped by creatures, but not so early as to catch yourself leaving.

Pearce: Let's rig something mysterious in the time machine and blow this popsickle stand, Feral Chick!

Feral Chick: And how! I'm so happy that you rescued me that I feel confident that the two of us can out run, maneuver, and climb this whole race of spider monkey rhino people on crack that are chasing us!

Marcus: What the? So the Time Machine was set to self-destruct in a kind of warp-core-breach future bomb? Vast blue expanses of future just slopped out of the explosion and lapped up all the evil stuff into rapidly aged extinction? But he's already established that he can't use the time machine to change the past!

Peabody: True, but by killing all of the Morlocks, he has altered the future.

Marcus: Yeah, but one man's future is another man's past! I mean, if he couldn't save his girlfriend by going back in time to keep her from being shot, why are we to presume that he can prevent a dark Morlock future by going back in time to set off a chronology bomb? It doesn't make any sense.

Peabody: Well... now that you put it that way...

Marcus: Is this whole story just a dark, fatalistic tale of helplessness? Is the moral that no matter what you do, or how many times you try to redo it, that there is one plan for the universe that cannot be altered? That no matter what, you're still just stuck in the same, meaningless, ever grinding rat race?

Peabody: It's a mad mad mad mad world.

Marcus: I'll drink to that.