Let me write to the point.
If I were H. G. Wells, I would revolve around my tomb a thousand times while someone was trying to create a story about time travel just like this, over my own work, apparently without thinking on the impact of a set of changes built on the original story.
Not that it is something entirely useless, but if I had waited for this film to come in those little and less expensive, compact VHS cassettes, I would probably be more satisfied with this piece.
If you know the works of H G Wells at least a little, you won't probably like this movie, because this was kind of a disastrous remake of the original movie, not to take on account the fact that H G Wells, although mentioned on the story, is not even put on the credit list, not on the start, not at the end.
First of all, if you at least watched the original "Time Machine" movie, with Rod Taylor on the principal role, you would see that there is this scene where he is travelling in time things get older, transforming themselves, passing by his window. There is even this scene when Guy Pearce watches the mannequins on the window across the street, realizing that he is actually travelling through time. Well, it appears that they simply took the scene directly from the original movie and pasted it on the remake.
The original story is the base for this remake, and the idea of putting in the excellent Jeremy Irons to work as some kind of "super-evil-minded guy" on the command of everything below the surface has certain appeal, but then things get rough for the rest, since the "what if" -- the idea in which the entire story is centered -- counter-reasoning offered by Irons's character sheds some light on the rational paradox counteracting on the time travel idea of the main (Guy Pearce's) character, but one feels all the way that something lacks.
If a man loved so much, to the point of losing the beloved one and then creating a time machine just to rescue her again, then a time travel to 800,000 years in the future might be a good attempt to find a rational answer for the denial of the loss of a beloved one, but this is not enough to fulfill the empty space emotionally left for a loss that happened at least twice in a matter of four years.
The argument of something being "just a machine", even if it is an all-time revolutionary Time Machine, is, however, interesting: because human life is certainly more important than whatever you can think of in terms of an industrial and productive effort towards any kind of comfort. In this way, the movie makes its point; however, still, we have to take it back to H G Wells, since the first argument of the value of human life is inherent (while not so visible) in the original story.
If you like sci-fi you have to take a look at it. However, I recommend that you read the book from H G Wells and the older movie with Rod Taylor, too. Only then you will get a good picture on the grandfather of time travelling stories since the end of the 19th century.


Recommended:
Yes