Common Sense Note
Parents should know, first, that the movie is dismally inept: the special effects are laughably bad and the plot is incoherent. Parents should also know that the movie features violence in various forms: time travelers shoot and kill dinosaurs, and they are menaced by dinosaurs, variously mutated creatures (half primate/half reptile, flying batlike monsters, large roach-like insects). These scenes -- in the dark among trees, in a dark and flooded subway tunnel -- might be frightening for younger viewers. A couple's one-night stand is indicated by his emergence from the bedroom in his boxers, while she appears only partly covered. One character shoots himself in the head (not graphically, but obviously), and another sacrifices himself to a herd of creatures in order to save his friends.
Families can discuss the poor planning by the time-traveling, so-called scientists: how can they imagine their hunting of prehistoric creatures won't affect the future (their present) in some way? How does Travis recover his sense of self-confidence and -respect by saving the world?
Common Sense Review
Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs
Ridiculous at every level, A SOUND OF THUNDER features Ben Kingsley as Charles Hatton, the ultimate corporate villain, making money off ignorant and way-too-wealthy thrill-seekers. Specifically, he's the owner of Time Safari Inc., an agency that sends Hatton's rich peers back 63 million years so that they can shoot very big, very toothy allosauruses.
Based very loosely on a short story by Ray Bradbury, the movie's premise is that killing these mighty reptiles does not affect the future, but that the smooshing of a single butterfly causes havoc in 2055, the movie's present. The explanation here -- that the hunt is timed so the dinosaurs are about to die within seconds anyway, so dying slightly sooner is okay, time-continuum-wise -- is surely weak.
Go-back team leader and vaguely defined "scientist" Travis Ryer (Edward Burns) shows his distaste for the scheme repeatedly: but after he pouts, he goes along for the ride anyway. His employer, Hatton, insists that he cajole clients so Hatton can profit: "I hired you because you were a big deal scientist... They pay, you study, I get rich. Is this a great country or what?"
Hatton's clunky logic and cartoonish villainy are bolstered by his collusions with government inspectors (who allow cheats in the system in exchange for payoffs), but soon obscured by the absurd plot. The changes caused by a time travel "jump" that goes wrong appear random and disjointed: Chicago's winter days are suddenly balmy, trees grow through walls, pavement cracks, power goes out, and the population is suddenly absent (this last seems more a consequence of lack of extras than any understandable environmental effect).
Travis meets with Sonia Rand (Catherine McCormack), the angry scientist who invented the technology by which he time travels. She "explains" that more changes will come via "time waves," wavy-shadowy effects that wash over the city (and Chicago is the only location noted here, though someone suggests in passing that the entire world must be similarly affected). Not to mention the fact that these changes (no electricity) make it hard to go back in time to undo the original damage. Conveniently and unbelievably, Sonia jerry-rigs a power supply to send Travis back.
Extra-unfortunately, Travis and Sonia must make their way through flooded subway tunnels. As they battle a gigantic, anaconda-like mutated eel, they also wade through water that now resembles flooded streets images from New Orleans (so, on top of everything else wrong with it, A Sound of Thunder also has bad timing). Throughout, the clichés come fast and furious: Travis is the reluctantly macho hero, Sonia is the brains, and the black guy -- tech officer Payne (MI-5's David Oyelowo) -- sacrifices himself so the rest of the team can reach their destination (this with the promise that Travis will be able to get back in time and "fix it," meaning that all this devastation will be erased. If only the same might be done for A Sound of Thunder.
Families who enjoy sci-fi movies may prefer: Total Recall, Jurassic Park, The Terminator, and Anaconda (not time travel, but better snakes). Or you might also enjoy time traveling with the much cleverer Back to the Future franchise.
Rate It!
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Sexual ContentBefore and after Edward Burns "services" a woman client offscreen, he appears in boxers. |
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ViolenceWholly ridiculous, including battling with badly digitized creatures (dinosaurs, monkey creatures, bat creatures), shooting at prey, a suicide shoots himself in the head (not explicit, but obvious). |
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LanguageMultiple uses of "ass." |
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Social BehaviorSheer stupidity, corporate greed, what amounts to unnamed male prostitution. |
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CommercialismStarbucks-looking coffee shop. |
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Drug/Alcohol/TobaccoDrinking, smoking. |
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