Oh yeah! A brand new way to win the hot chick who won’t speak to you! And it’s all just so simple – First, get a time machine. Next, have your neighbors throw a bitchin’ party that said girl gets invited to. Now, and this part is key, make sure when she pulls up fashionably late to the party that your driveway is magically empty and available to her. After she goes into the party, pop her hood and attach power cables to her battery to ensure proper power flow for your time machine. Finally, when the hot chick comes down to your basement to ask “why the f*** is my car hooked to power cables?!” make sure that she becomes an unwilling participant in time travel itself, thus tying her to you for life. Got it?
To tell the truth, I loved Project Almanac, and only recognize its many flaws in retrospect, but they aren’t near enough to make me dislike the film. David (Jonny Weston) is a minor league model-making scientist with his heart set on M.I.T. When the college says, “yay, you’re in,” but only gives $5k in scholarship awards, it is akin to a rejection. In his effort to find buried treasure in the attic (if it’s the attic, is it “elevated treasure?”), he finds a video of his 7-year-old birthday party, where, apparently, 17-year-old David was in attendance. Did he think to wish himself a Happy Birthday? That just seems common sense.
Turns out his long lost scientist dad left a time machine hidden in the basement. (Why didn’t you look there first?!) No, we never really dis
cover why dad has been lost for ten years … or why his time machine blueprints look like a fold-out schematic to build a Lego toaster. Maybe dad was just into EZ blueprints. David enlists the help of the negligible teens around him: his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) and fellow nerds Quinn (Sam Lerner) and Adam (Allen Evangelista), to build and drive the thing. And as described above, he also captures the curiously expendable hottie Jessie (Sofia Black-D’Elia) to share in their Dr. Whofoolery.
The scope of Project Almanac is hardly large or sound. Most of the film is hand shot from the perspective of the kids documenting their adventures. The hand-held stuff is better than your average found-footage horror. Still, the imagination here is limited. The kids never think to go forward in time, and the subversive manipulation of the universe for the most part involves cheating in school, living up Lollapalooza and almost winning the lottery. There’s a laugh-out-loud moment when the kids realize they’ve blown it and only got five of six winning numbers. (You had one job!) When the teens all pose with their novelty $1.8M check, the expressions couldn’t be glummer.
To me, Project Almanac is entirely about the relationship between David and Jessie. We explore it almost entirely from David’s point-of-view, with plenty of questions asked and only a few answered. Would Jessie have found David a catch without the time machine? Would David have summoned the nerve to push the relationship without the help of time travel? Is time itself for or against this relationship? I pinpointed the moment when I gave Project Almanac the thumbs up – it was when David realizes the same time ripple that allowed him to capture Jessie’s heart also indirectly leads to a plane crash with two hundred deaths. And as the camera explores David’s expression, the implication and the realization, we can practically read the thought bubble, “but … but … but … she fell in love with me!” I contend that nobody who has ever fallen in love could voluntarily take that moment back without the same hesitation regardless of body count.
And I’m not taking this moment back – rare thumbs up on a hand held movie. I am curious for Almanac II, but perhaps it’s better left under wraps, like a potentially misused time machine.
♪I can’t wait forever
Oh wait. I think I can
See I’ve got this nifty gizmo
If it fails, try one more plan
But time won’t let me
Time won’t let me
Time won’t let me ee ee ee
Get the girl♫
Rated PG-13, 106 Minutes
D: Dean Israelite
W: Andrew Deutschman, Jason Pagan
Genre: Irresponsible time travel
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Irresponsible time travelers
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Time Lords
♪ Parody inspired by “Time Won’t Let Me”
