The Time Machine (2002)

This movie starts off highly unpromising. The immediate impression is one of TV movie production value, if not even lower depths of cheesiness. And the initial setup scenes—including a hastily arranged romantic subplot that ends with an inciting incident—have little in the way of entertainment value. But then, once the plot really kicks into gear, with Guy Pearce making ever further forays along the timeline, the whole story really starts to hum and grows quite engaging, if perhaps not truly engrossing. The future world is actually well conceived, with appropriately stepped up production values and effects to go with. I can’t speak to the physics of the thing—the story’s justifications may ultimately be full of holes—and there’s at least one piece of the future puzzle that comes across as unaddressed, at the very least, if not actually impossible, but as a light work of movie making, this one does its job to an adequate degree. And it clocks in at under two hours, so you won’t feel oppressed by the passage of time as you view. That makes it time mostly well spent.