‘A Sound of Thunder’: A limp and boring adaptation
It really was unnecessary, an adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s short story “A Sound of Thunder,” about time travelers whose misstep among dinosaurs 65 million years ago changes the course of evolution, with devastating consequences in the present.
After all, one of those Halloween specials on “The Simpsons” already swiped that story and did more with it in just a few minutes of screen time than director Peter Hyams manages in nearly two hours.
Better to get the DVD and watch Homer Simpson stomp on every prehistoric creature in sight than waste time watching Edward Burns and Ben Kingsley muck about in this derivative mess that plays like a bad TV ripoff of “Jurassic Park.”
Given the big, provocative premise of Bradbury’s story, “A Sound of Thunder” is a limp and boring adaptation. The screenplay credited to Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer and Gregory Poirier lacks thrills and chills, and the characters are stiff stereotypes of callous businessmen and scientists wrestling with the implications of their own discoveries.
Burns plays Dr. Travis Ryer, who leads rich thrill-seekers back to the Cretaceous Era for Time Safari Inc. in Chicago in the year 2055.
Ridiculously done up in a mini-conehead of albino white hair, Kingsley is Charles Hatton, the unscrupulous Time Safari boss who puts dollars ahead of the colossal risks to humanity he takes in sending sightseers to the distant past.
Hatton has poached the time-traveling technology from Dr. Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), a researcher who whines about the dangers inherent in her own invention (will these ecologically minded scientists ever learn to reason out the drawbacks before they come up with their doomsday devices?).
Time Safari has strict rules for the wealthy yahoos the company ferries back to the past. Don’t leave anything behind, don’t bring anything back, don’t wander off the prescribed pathway. Do they really expect a bunch of spoiled tourists to follow instructions?
The dinosaur doo-doo hits the fan after a wayfarer takes a step off the route the Time Safari tour guides have carefully carved out through Reptile World.
Terrible changes manifest themselves back in the present, including climate changes, monstrous vegetation sprouting through the pavement, swarms of giant bugs and huge, baboon-faced reptiles with bad dispositions and a taste for human flesh.
Practically everyone else in Chicago seems to have vanished or been eaten, yet Ryer, Rand and their Time Safari playmates manage to navigate the junglelike cityscape as they race to find a way to reset evolution’s clock.
Burns dispenses with the whiny manchild act he generally presents in his own romances, but he has little presence here as an action lead. Along with his outrageous hairdo, Kingsley looks stiff and uncomfortable uttering his silly robber-baron platitudes, while McCormack is in the perpetual furrowed-brow school of acting.
An aura of stinginess pervades the visual effects, from phony prehistoric jungles to mid-21st century Chicago with its cartoonish, look-alike electric cars that zip along with such precision the vehicles resemble segments of a giant centipede.
There is a bright spot for Chicago of the future. Ryer’s apartment has a banner proclaiming the Chicago Cubs the world champs of 2022, so baseball fans have that to look forward to. So long as time-traveling White Sox enthusiasts don’t step in and change history.
“A Sound of Thunder,” a Warner Bros. release, is rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence, partial nudity and language. Running time: 102 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.