Time travel movies are an inherently risky proposition. Not only does the audience have to keep track of shifting settings and complicated questions of causality, but there is always the very real possibility that the hero is sleeping with his great-grandmother. And though this could lead to an interesting family reunion where the character's own grandchild takes him over his knee, no one really wants to see this.

Still, Hollywood insists on continuing to tread these risky waters with impunity, perhaps because they need something to fill the time while they prep the big screen adaptation of "The Facts of Life." Don't they see the corpses of KATE AND LEOPOLD and THE VISITORS littering the shoreline? Don't they care? I can only assume that they don't. How else could you explain the ballsy casting of Paul Walker as the lead in TIMELINE? Walker is actor who makes Skeet Ulrich seem complex, who never met a movie he couldn't look out of his depth in. He is the rare actor who can be out-acted by Vin Diesel, a man made entirely of sheetrock.

Naturally, when TIMELINE producers went looking for someone who could combine all the intensity of Andrew McCarthy with the intellectualism of Dolph Lundgren, Walker knew he was the right man for the part. What followed was an long campaign for the part that involved having his agent schedule an appointment and going to an audition. There, he was forced to endure an intensive question-and-answer session about how the traffic was on his drive over, if he wanted a beverage, and whether he was willing to get his hair highlighted for the part. It was grueling, but Paul passed with flying colors, answering "not bad," "some water, thanks," and "sure." Clearly, this was destiny.

In the movie, Walker plays Chris, the bland son of Professor Edward Johnston, an archaeologist busy excavating the site of an ancient battle between the English and the French at Castlegard in 1357. And, as it just so happens, scientists at the indistinctly named International Technology Corporation have invented a time machine that is apparently only capable of sending people to that exact location. What luck! Naturally, this technology in hand, they do what any corporation without any real purpose or goals would do: They transport the Professor back to 1357 and leave him there.

Why they do this is left largely up to the audience's imagination. Is it an elaborate practical joke? An executive's costly revenge for a failing grade? The filmmakers don't really say, nor do they explain why they want the professor back so badly that they recruit a bunch of his grad students and Chris to go get him back. Fortunately, the rescue goes swimmingly, no one endangers history or dies, and everyone is back before lunch. The remaining 97 minutes of the film shows everyone eating nachos and playing checkers.

Wait, sorry, that's what the audience wished they were doing. Instead, they got to watch Chris and his pals spend the rest of the movie alternating between getting captured and getting killed in escape attempts. As rescuers go, this group is about as effective as Walker's acting: Two of their ranks are killed immediately after they arrive, and three others get hacked up before the third act. Of course, you'd think that the people at ITC would have seen this coming and warned them, since it's literally ancient history. Heck, since this is the past we're talking about, they should have known that the professor was going to get stuck and captured before they even sent him, so we're clearly not talking about real intellectual heavyweights. Then again, we do learn that this is apparently a corporation looking to take over the world by sending people to ancient France. So, yeah. Good luck with that.

The professor, for his part, took all of two minutes to get captured and hand over advanced military technology to the English. Of all the people who should understand the implications of radically altering the past, you'd think it would be the man who not only studies history for a living, but spent a good chunk of his life researching the very battle he's about to irrevocably change. (At least until a different indistinct corporation decides to take over the world by sending academics with, say, nuclear weapons back to a previous battle. Then all bets are off.)

Then again, if he did change things, then he's already done it, and it doesn't really matter. But it didn't happen that way when they were studying the site in the future, which means he didn't change it. Only, he did, and...

See? See, Hollywood? This is why you shouldn't make these kinds of movies, not unless you're willing to provide everyone in the audience with a flow chart and some Tylenol.

Anyway, eventually, Paul manages to get captured in the same general area as his father, and they can go home, which is accomplished by fiddling with a necklace. Only, one of the grad students has fallen in love with some woman who is probably his grandmother's grandmother's grandmother or something, and he wants to stay behind and make paradoxical babies with her. Which probably screws up all sorts of history.

But, honestly, why on earth would an archaeology student give a crap about that?

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