A Sound of Thunder
Regardless of where one stands on the debate over human origins, both sides should be able to agree that the new evolution movie, ''A Sound of Thunder," is a work of unintelligent design. Set in a future that allows man to travel back 65 million years via time machine, the movie fails to conjure the wonder of the Ray Bradbury short story that inspired it.
Instead, we get a frequently shirtless, often anesthetizing Edward Burns as a hunter who leads the retro tours. Burns's character is also a scientist, and he conducts these trips for a company called Time Safari in the hope of doing something, uh, more scientific with the technology. Time travelers are there merely to hunt the designated prehistoric target and then turn around and trudge back through a wormhole.
One of the rules at Time Safari is that guests can't touch anything on the trip. They can't remove anything or leave anything behind, either. Naturally, someone does, and tidal ''time waves" that wash over Chicago are provoked. Now the entire city looks like the set of a Sid and Marty Krofft production. There are deadly vines and gangs of man-eating half-baboon, half-dinosaur creatures that seem to have waltzed out of ''Land of the Lost."
They give much better performances than the noncomputer-generated cast, which never seems to be anywhere near the creatures in the first place. The weaponry, meanwhile, consists of chunky gray guns that shoot nitroglycerin. Somewhere in the 25th century Buck Rogers is missing them.
The budget for this picture is allegedly tens of millions of dollars, but the film looks like it was paid for with petty cash. These are among the least convincing special effects I've ever seen.
The obvious fakery robs the movie of a sense of disaster or panic. Ben Kingsley, as the weasel running Time Safari, contributes a load of camp. Dressed in a white wig and playing a sissy, he's embarrassing, too, having accepted a part clearly intended for Malcolm McDowell.
The makers of ''A Sound of Thunder" seem only vaguely aware of their source material and its cautionary tenor. Published in 1954 and collected in ''R Is for Rocket," the tale eerily wondered about dictatorship, godlessness, and ecology, and inadvertently introduced the principle of the butterfly effect -- in 18 pages! Here, Bradbury's story is stepped on like a sheet of toilet paper stuck to the sole of a shoe.
The adaptation by Gregory Poirier, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Thomas Dean Donnelly is an execrable misapprehension. It invents corny creatures, dumb dialogue, and action sequences that the director, Peter Hyams, has no idea what to do with. Hyams is a veteran who's made ''2010," ''End of Days," and a couple Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. He has a career no bomb can stop, although this latest picture feels like one he might have made decades ago.
Which raises an interesting evolutionary question. Is a bad movie now as bad as one 20 years ago, or does badness change over time? Perhaps. But in this case, it doesn't matter. This movie is a caveman, and I doubt evolution will affect that.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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