Veteran director Richard Donner, on the set of his recent adventure film, Timeline, says entertainment is his mission in life.

Familiar names like Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater lead a recent critics poll by a British newspaper listing the world's best directors. Veteran director Richard "Dick" Donner, a one-man industry responsible for blockbuster hits like The Omen, Superman: The Movie and the Lethal Weapon series, is not on the list, nor will he likely ever be on any critic's list. Popcorn pictures, the type of entertainments Donner regularly makes, fall below the radar of film pundits inclined to serious drama, documentaries and experimental fare.

Soderbergh is considered a sellout by many critics for making an overtly commercial movie like Ocean's Eleven. Linklater is a sellout for shifting from personal movies like Waking Life to the Rock & Roll comedy, The School of Rock.

Nobody calls Donner a sellout because he has been a commercial Hollywood filmmaker through and through, ever since his first feature -- the 1976 demon child thriller, The Omen.

Richard Donner is no David Lynch, nor does he want to be. At least that's what he says, speaking earlier this month in Los Angeles, after a preview screening of his latest movie, an adaptation of the Michael Crichton time travel thriller, Timeline.

"I don't know; I never thought about that ('70s nostalgia)," Donner says, sitting beside his wife and Timeline producer, Lauren Shuler Donner. "I always said if I had the opportunity to go back, I would return to the '60s because I had such a great time then ..."

What's refreshing, if somewhat astounding, about Donner is his happiness with who he is and the movies he makes. He's not a hit moviemaker who craves critical acclaim in addition to financial success.

Donner helped create the age of the Hollywood blockbuster and, while his high-profile career is healthy, he is shortchanged in the area of acclaim and critical recognition. Money is not everything, and there are times when a filmmaker, no matter how successful he is, wants respect.

Donner could be the exception to that rule. He shows no desire to start taking himself seriously.

"That's my mission," he says with a booming voice. "My mission is entertainment. I say this a million times: If you want to be depressed, you can turn on the news for free. I don't like to go to movies if someone tells me they're very depressing. I don't want it. I have enough of that in my life and what's going on in the world today and what's going on in our country."

Explosions, chases, gunfights and wisecracks are the key ingredients in a Donner movie. The stories, whether costume adventures like Ladyhawke and Maverick or a present-day thriller, Conspiracy Theory, are about showing audiences a good time. The circus ringmaster handiwork necessary to organize action stunts, elaborate sets, costumes and special effects is evident. Yet Donner faces the fact that few critics take someone seriously who works solely in the realm of the action-adventure blockbuster, no matter how skilled or successful they might be.

Time and audiences are on Donner's side when it comes to evaluating his worth. Simply put, his movies make money. Considering that each Lethal Weapon movie, featuring the charismatic duo of family man Murtaugh (Danny Glover), a LAPD Detective awaiting retirement, and his wild man partner, Riggs (Mel Gibson), made more money than the last, it's surprising that Warner Bros. finally stopped making them.

Donner almost always delivers a story and characters people want to see and experience. Interestingly, his key box-office hiccup occurred around his most serious directing effort, the sweet-natured coming-of-age drama, Radio Flyer. Donner has displayed a golden touch for making popular movies on numerous occasions, although, he understands it's a touch that can lose sync with the times and the latest generation of teenage moviegoers.

On the previous night, Donner stood in the lobby of the cavernous screening auditorium on Paramount's Hollywood lot. It was the first time Timeline would be watched by members of the press and many Paramount staff.

While waiting for some key guests, Donner walked to the front of the auditorium to welcome the crowd. He joked about the additional gate security and the Paramount bosses. He was loose, funny and casual about showing the movie.

Archeologists -- (L-R) Rossif Sutherland, Frances O'Connor, Paul Walker and Gerard Butler -- and a cop (Neal McDonough) travel to medieval France in Timeline.

"I just want you to know that what you're seeing is real," Donner told the crowd. "Except for a CG (computer generated) shot of a distant castle on the hill, everything was built. This is old-fashioned moviemaking."

Timeline arrives in theaters with all the Donner trademarks intact. Its fantasy story is rousing adventure. Glaswegian comedian Billy Connolly plays Professor Edward Johnston, an archeologist who travels back to medieval France, thanks to a time travel machine created by his corporate supporter. Trapped in the past, it's up to his son (Paul Walker) and students (Gerard Butler, Frances O'Connor) to travel back, retrieve him and return to the future before history has been altered.

Timeline is based on a popular Michael Crichton best seller, the author of Jurassic Park and Congo. Paul Walker is a popular heartthrob at the moment thanks to his roles in the drag racing films The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious; a loose performer in the style of Mel Gibson.

Timeline packs plenty of visual wow: elaborate medieval costumes, armor, a gigantic time travel machine equipped with 90 mirrored panels and 20 tons of steel, and life-size re-creations of an ancient French castle and village.

The history behind Timeline is a case study in showbiz power between a popular author and a prolific director. Crichton agreed to a deal with Paramount for Timeline, giving the studio free adaptation rights in return for 15 percent of the first-dollar gross when the film would be released. The deal was made before Timeline was even published. One of the provisions of the deal stated that Paramount would pay Crichton a $1 million fine if the film was not made. The other stipulation was that Paramount had to secure Donner to direct the movie.

Donner says Timeline experienced more than its share of delays and production obstacles, but Paramount remained committed to the picture. It would have been bad business for the studio not to.

Donner learned his craft as a young man directing episodes of TV shows like Wanted: Dead or Alive (featuring future star Steve McQueen), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Fugitive and episodes of The Twilight Zone. Donner appeared as an actor in Martin Ritt's live TV production of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage, but he quickly sensed his future was on the other side of the camera. Ritt helped him secure plenty of directing jobs.

In 1976, the same year Scorsese's Taxi Driver hit theaters, wowing critics with its grim tale of a depraved New York City taxi driver succumbing to extreme violence, Donner made box-office gold with his debut feature, The Omen, about the birth of devilish, deadly Damien and the attempts by his father, Gregory Peck, to stop the bloodletting by murdering the demon child at a church's altar.

While the '70s was an era celebrated for classic adult dramas like Nashville, Chinatown and The Godfather, Donner brought it to a close with his 1978 comic book adventure, Superman: The Movie.

Peering through the current wave of '70s film nostalgia and celebration, it's as if Donner let the revolution and youthful rebellion pass him by. He eschewed the serious dramas being made by peer directors like Hal Ashby and Francis Coppola. Donner jumped on the big-budget, comic book bandwagon created by '70s hits like Jaws and Star Wars. He wanted to be mainstream, meaning he was right on time with the changes in Hollywood.

"I did a picture years ago called Inside Moves, written by Barry Levinson and Valerie Curtin. The movie ended as the book did on a real dire note, very depressing," he says. "I said the one thing in this story is hope and we added an ending to that movie and that became an important thing for me as a director. I love an audience to come out and feel that they have been entertained. I want them to feel good, that there's hope. I want them to be up.

"Even in The Omen I had the kid turn around and, at the last moment, he smiles. The audience laughs and they wonder, 'Did this really happen?' They're not sure if this is real."

Despite the setbacks (he was slated to direct a Superman and Batman pairing called The World's Finest, with Mel Gibson and Daniel Day-Lewis rumored to don the capes), Donner's track record speaks wonders.

LAPD detectives Riggs (Mel Gibson) and Murtaugh (Danny Glover) are the stars of Lethal Weapon 4.

His influence on the movies Hollywood currently makes is impossible to understate. Donner's teen friendly canon includes The Goonies and Ladyhawke, and a generation of copycat directors and producers continues to make movies just like his.

Donner's progeny include Spiderman director Sam Ramie and Barry Sonnenfeld, director of The Addams Family and Men in Black movies, audience-friendly adventures that could easily be switched with one of Donner's movies. Look at Donner's Wild West adventure Maverick and Sonnenfeld's adaptation of the 1960s TV show, Wild Wild West, and some scenes are interchangeable. The point is that both films are pure, unabashed popcorn movies.

Nobody, not the Paramount staffers who group around Donner while he shakes hands goodbye in a hotel hallway or even Donner himself, are sure if Timeline will prove popular with audiences. But the film fits perfectly with Donner's oeuvre. Of course, the idea of using the word "oeuvre" and Donner in the same sentence would shock any critic who wants to keep Donner tagged with his popcorn label.

During the morning interview, what Donner never says -- what he cannot say -- is whether his work is worthwhile and serious enough to warrant critical evaluation beyond whether one had fun watching Lethal Weapon 2.

"I love life," he says. "I enjoy it totally and I'm the happiest married man I've ever known and possible to be. We have a great life and a great family, and there is happiness around me, and we like to keep it that way.

"One bad apple on the set is all it takes, whether be it leading man or leading lady or cameraman or the sweeper. If they have a bad attitude, you talk to them and, if they can't change, I get rid of them. I don't care who it is, because I like going to work in the morning, and I want everyone around to feel the same way."

One closing thought hangs over Donner's future. In the '50s, French critics like André Bazin and Jean-Luc Godard first celebrated the entertainments made by Howard Hawks, Samuel Fuller and Bud Boetticher. An outsiders' eye was required to see something richer, deeper in the popular American movies of the time.

The same thing could be happening with Richard Donner. Somewhere on the other side of the globe, while Donner prepares for the release of Timeline, a German film student is finishing an essay about Lethal Weapon as portrait of the middle-aged man in crisis. With that one essay, everything could change for Donner: He could earn some respect, whether he wants it or not. ©