Michael Crichton movies have been a hit with the box office and sometimes a miss with critics.

This time, the popular author is teamed up with action film director Richard Donner ("Lethal Weapon," "Conspiracy Theory") for a big-budget time-travel flick.

"Timeline" is about a group of archaeological students trapped in 14th-century France while trying to save their professor.

The group must survive one of the bloodiest battles in history and try to make it back to the 21st century. Donner called the book a "real page turner."

Donner, who said he has been wanting to work with Crichton, said fans of the book will be pleased with this movie. It is set to be released Nov. 26.

"We stayed as faithful as you can, yet we made the changes that we felt were necessary to cut the picture down to 110 minutes," he said. "At times, when you make a picture, you have to take two or three characters and turn them into one. We stayed basically as close as we could."

The film, which involved the construction of an actual castle to replicate the time period, features very few computer-generated effects. Donner said such effects have been ruining the industry. If you can build it, or do it with models, he said, there is no use for computers.

"I've kind of got a problem with a lot of the new approaches to action movies," he said of films such as "The Matrix" trilogy. "It seems like, 'How much bigger can we make it?'"

Today's trends in films aside, Donner said he hopes fans of Crichton, and those who haven't read the book, will buy a ticket for this century-spanning flick.

"I hope they come away with a feeling that they were thoroughly entertained and learned something from it," he said. "And that they cared about the people."

But caring about the characters probably is one of the toughest problems with the film, Donner said.

"The biggest obstacle was bringing the characters to life and to create relationships and to create a character you are emotionally charged with," he said. "If you have the best action in the world, it means nothing."

American thought and language Professor Gary Hoppenstand, a fan of Crichton's, echoed the sentiment and said characterization is one of the author's weaknesses. Crichton's characters often are stereotypical and lack the depth other authors might give, he said.

But Hoppenstand said one of the reasons is that Crichton, who also has been a film director, writes cinematically and spends most of his time trying to move the plot instead of building on characters.

His books "Jurassic Park," "Eaters of the Dead" and now "Timeline" all have been films and are updated versions of such famous books as "Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World" and the earliest epic poem in English known, "Beowulf."

"He is probably the best writer of adventure going today," he said. "He does what popular fiction used to do and that is defy genre."