'Thunder' deserves a sound razzing

A SOUND OF THUNDER — * — Edward Burns, Ben Kingsley, Catherine McCormack; rated PG-13 (violence, profanity, vulgarity, brief drugs, brief gore).

"A Sound of Thunder" hasn't gotten better with age. The filmmakers shot this laughably bad science-fiction thriller three years ago, only to have the studio shelve it while the execs tried to figure out what to do with it.

And rather than spending money on reshoots and re-edits that evidently only made it worse, they would have been better off sending it straight to video rather than displaying it on the big screen, where all its faults are even more glaring.

(The better option would be to pull the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" guys out of retirement and let them give it the derisive mocking it so richly deserves.)

That the film even purports to be based on a short story by much-loved author Ray Bradbury is an insult to his estimable body of work. "A Sound of Thunder" hopelessly mangles his tale about the perils of time travel.

Edward Burns stars as Travis Ryer, a scientist who moonlights as a guide for "time safaris," or time-traveling hunting expeditions. (Essentially, Travis and his cohorts take rich folks 65 million years into the past so they can shoot and kill a predatory dinosaur.)

They're smart enough to warn their clients not to disturb anything else in the past, but unfortunately, one of their expeditions has gone awry. Upon returning to the present, they're beset by a series of time "waves," which are bringing changes (subtle at first) in the habitat and wildlife.

And as the time waves intensify, Travis and the others have to find what has been changed in the past so they can go back and possibly undo the changes made to their time line.

The CGI effects are not even up to the level of your average television movie. (Several of the creatures don't appear to be fully rendered.)

Also, director Peter Hyams and his cast seem determined to play this hokum with a straight face, except for Ben Kingsley, who is clearly trying to give the worst performance possible — it's almost as if he's begging Hyams to cut his scenes out of the movie.

"A Sound of Thunder" is rated PG-13 for scenes of strong action violence (shootings, creature attacks and explosive mayhem), scattered use of strong profanity and crude slang terms, brief drug content (hypodermic use) and brief gore. Running time: 102 minutes.

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E-mail: jeff@desnews.com