Director: Gareth Carrivick
Cast: Chris O’Down, Dean Lennox Kelly, Marc Wootton, Anna Faris
Have I Seen It Before?: Nope. It’s been lingering on my HBO Go queue for a few years. Now it can be set free.
Did I like it?: This film really wants me to like it. Time travel, right off the bat, will get a favorable view from me. After all, I kind of liked the last two Terminator movies. I’m an easy mark. I’ve enjoyed O’Dowd and Faris in other things before. Even the opening credits bring to mind the sweeping cosmic wonder of Richard Donner’s Superman (1978).
But those credits don’t feel like they belong there. The original Superman is only a tangentially a time travel story, and only then because the plot had become too big without the use of deus ex machina.
The time travel story itself is boring when it isn’t being insistently convoluted.
The stars seem bored here, as if this was they movie they managed to wrangle at that moment, and they’re waiting for better movies to come find them.
It clearly wants to reach for the manic joy on display in Shaun of the Dead (2004), but either an anemic budget, lack of ambition, dim commitment to the material, or some mixture of the three, the film looks blander than most television of the era. Both Doctor Who before its rebirth and the original Star Trek had far more visual panache here, and perhaps in a more apt reference to Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), the film lurches through an unsatisfying conclusion waterlogged by substandard special effects and ends without one beat of catharsis. It’s de regeur to end movies like this with a Back to the Future-style ending that teases further adventures to be found in the sequel, but by the time the credits arrive, I’m not particularly interested in spending further time with the characters.
And, not for nothing, but at no time are frequently asked questions about time travel ever addressed. Call it something else, maybe?