Sailing along the river time.

• Author: Gehring, Wes D.
• Position: Movies on time travel - REEL WORLD

KURT VONNEGUT DESCRIBES the random time travel of Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) antihero Billy Pilgrim as becoming "unstuck in time." I always have enjoyed this theme in literature, starting with H.G. Wells' signature work, The lime Machine. Naturally, I also like to watch the many screen adaptations of these stories, though sometimes the filming creates provocative problems. For instance, the time-tripping antihero of "The Time Traveler's Wife" (2009) always arrives in his new destination sans clothes. Unless you are Lady Godiva, or maybe Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, public nudity is seldom a good thing, especially when these time trips occur randomly.

What makes the nudity especially edgy in "The Time Traveler's Wife" is that he meets his future spouse on several occasions when she still is a child. While everything strictly is PG on the printed page, such as that he is in the bushes or behind a tree, when these scenes are innocently replicated on the screen, one half expects a subplot involving the vice squad.

In novels in which time machines are involved, the vehicles always are described with a scientifically real panache, and readers like myself immediately buy into the concept. Yet, when the movies visualize them, they invariably seem like an Einstein Edsel. That is, a bit old-fashioned and rickety for pinballing through time--with the exception of the slick DeLorean from the inspired "Back to the Future" franchise.

For argument's sake, however, even if the time machine's design suits one's fantasy, such as the quaint bauble showcased in the charming "Time After Time" (1979) in which H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) chases Jack the Ripper into the future, the now-dated special effects undercut the time-tripping. Thus, Wells' "purple haze" exit from London to modem San Francisco looks like an LSD outtake from the Jack Nicholson-scripted film "The Trip" (1967, with Peter Fonda).

George Pal's screen adaptation of "The Time Machine" (1960, with Rod Taylor) remains my favorite take on Wells' novella, but the Oscar-winning special effects now seem a bit like flat champagne. Conversely, the more recent "Time Machine" (2002, with Guy Pearce) adaptation, directed by Simon Wells (H.G.'s great-grandson), takes such a special-effects-on-steroids approach that the characters are MIA, but the film would have received the stock satirical rave from John Candy's SCTV mock movie reviewer: "It blowed up real good."

Typically, neither novels nor movies tend...