By Michael Gray
Dublin teen pop singer Samantha Mumba took time out last year from her music career to try her hand at acting in the Dreamworks film of HG Wells’s classic “The Time Machine.”
The 19-year-old debuts in a lead role as Mara, a sultry cliff dweller from the future who befriends Alexander Hartdegen, a dotty time-traveler from 19th Century New York, played by Aussie actor Guy Pearce. The pair join forces to take on the subterranean Morlocks, led by Jeremy Irons in Johnny Winter makeup and wig, and save her people, the Eloi, from being eaten. Directed by Wells’s great-grandson Simon, the film opened last week in the U.S. to derision from critics.
Much of the reaction was based on fondness for the 1960 version of “The Time Machine,” a durable piece of sci-fi hokum and low-fi special effects starring another Australian, Rod Taylor, as the scientist, and Yvette Mimieux as the Eloi maiden he meets in the distant future. Their film, like the book that inspired it, is weighted with Wells’s stern warnings about the bad effects our current misdeeds will have on future society.
In the new version, director Simon Wells shows no filial piety for the old boy’s concerns. He sets aside the Wellsian sociology lessons, presenting instead a rip-roaring action film with romantic undercurrents and little in the way of science. The story stops making sense as the scientist’s time-trajectory takes him far into the future, hurtling away from previous strands of the plot, never to return.
But it’s a lot more fun to watch than the critics would have you believe. References to the earlier film and the book are handled with droll humor, the special effects are marvelous, and Mumba turns up the heat as the Eloi love-interest, in contrast to Yvette Mimieux’s insipid earlier efforts. The young Dubliner carries herself with a poise that belies her age and her lack of acting experience, and is well worth her second billing.
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“It was brilliant, actually,” Mumba said recently. “I had a fantastic time filming and doing the whole process. It was good, because I was getting really, really exhausted because the music thing was very full-on, and then I got the chance to do something new.
“After four months of shooting the movie, I was really looking forward to getting back into the music. So it’s good to have that contrast. It keeps it all kind of fresh.”
The singer has been molded by her handlers to compete in the U.S. pop market, and as she makes her screen debut in a year that finds several pop divas trying their hands at acting, comparisons are inevitable.
“It’s like, bad timing in a way, it seems like every pop singer is bringing out a movie,” Mumba said. “But I do think ‘The Time Machine’ is different, and I am going to be steering very clear of roles where I’d be playing a singer. I found it really refreshing to be working with a gang of people to get the job done, rather than doing a vehicle for a pop star.”
Mumba comes across as unaffected by her success, and remains very much the Dublin Northside kid she was when Irish pop svengali Louis Walsh transformed her into serious competition for Britney Spears on the far side of the Atlantic. She still prefaces her responses with a long “emmm,” like most Irish people answering questions, and hasn’t lost her Drumcondra accent. She attributes her calm handling of success to her training at Dublin’s renowned “Fame” academy, the Billie Barry Stage School.
“Studying with Billie definitely gave me stage presence, training, discipline,” Mumba said. “I’m very grateful to her. She was wonderful and definitely gave me a lot of experience and a lot of presence.”
Mumba’s brother Omero, who plays her Eloi kin Kalen in “The Time Machine,” also attended the prestigious school, and at 12, he’s already putting the training to good use.
“He used to go there, but he doesn’t anymore, because he’s actually got his own record deal now and he has a new CD coming out soon, recorded in Sweden, where I did mine earlier this year,” Mumba said.
The siblings still live at home in Drumcondra with their mother, despite their hectic international schedules. Drumcondra is on the north side of the city on the way to the airport, a quirk of geography that comes in handy for Samantha’s jet-setting lifestyle as she promotes “The Time Machine” abroad.
“So far this trip, I’ve done L.A., Boston, Washington, Orlando, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, I’m going back to L.A. on Monday, then I’ll be back in the UK, then back in L.A. in a couple of weeks,” Mumba said. “But I’m still living in Dublin, at home. I’ll always keep a home in Dublin; it’s so close to London it’s like catching a bus, its only a 40-minute flight.”
That’s a bus she’ll be catching a lot in the coming years — with her movie debut, a new album out in June, and three more to come in her five-album deal, Samantha Mumba will be clocking a lot of hours in the air for the foreseeable future.
“The Time Machine” is currently in cinemas nationwide in the U.S., and will open in Ireland in May. For more information on Irish films, visit www.IrelandOnFilm.com.