With his heady mix of fact and science fiction, Michael Crichton is a modern-day Jules Verne.

He takes his readers to fantastical worlds where dinosaurs rule, robots come to life, giant apes lurk and Vikings wage wars.

With its time-travel theme, Crichton's Timeline seems inspired by Verne's The Time Machine.

Scientists have created a machine they hope will send solid items across time in much the same way a fax machine sends images across distance.

During their experiments they discover they are linked to a black hole that allows them to travel back and forth to 14th-century France.

The scientists contact famed archeologist Edward Johnston (Billy Connolly), a specialist in that era, to send him back to collect data.

Something happens that strands Johnston, so a second expedition must go through the portal to find and bring him back before the portal closes forever.

The second team includes Johnston's son Chris (Paul Walker) plus archeologists Kate Ericson (Francis O'Connor), Francois Dontelle (Rossif Sutherland) and Andre Marek (Gerard Butler).

The new adventurers find themselves in the middle of a bloody battle between the French and English.

It's a promising scenario that never fully realizes its potential.

For the first 15 minutes, Timeline works like a mystery as the archeologists discover a pair of glasses and a written plea for help from Johnston in a dig they are conducting in France.

The transporter sequence that follows is intriguing because it comes with warnings. The time voyagers must return within a certain time span or they will remain in the past forever. But someone in their company is intent on sabotaging their mission.

None of these intriguing elements seems to matter once the expedition is actually in the 14th century.

Instead, Timeline turns into a routine adventure with plenty of medieval mayhem and even a budding romance between Marek and a French princess (Anna Friel).

The battle sequences are impressive with plenty of sword play, medieval battering rams, crossbows and catapults.

The invading English are the villains as they are trying to usurp land that belongs to the French royal family.

When Marek falls for the princess, he joins the resistance forces and his friends are compelled to do the same -- which makes for a strange pairing of Americans and Frenchmen.

The casting is strange to say the least.

Connolly and Butler have the strongest of Scottish brogues, yet it's surfer dude Walker who's supposed to be Connolly's son.

Walker is short-changed on the action and romance fronts.

While Butler is singlehandedly protecting the princess from dozens of warriors, Walker is crawling through tunnels with O'Connor.

When the science fiction element finally kicks back in and the travellers struggle to return to their world, it all seems like some puny afterthought.

Timeline is not so much a bad movie as it is bland and routine.

It cries out to be far more tense, exciting and suspenseful.

(This film is rated PG)

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