Time Travel Movie Fest: Project Almanac


2014 time travel movie

Rating: 9/20

Plot: Teens stumble upon a time travel device, get the thing working, and try to take advantage of their newfound powers. It goes about as well as you'd expect if you've ever seen another time travel movie. 

This movie is idiotic. 

I have to start with the style. Anybody who's read much of this blog knows that I like the found-footage genre. I've got no problems with it at all, and I might be one of the few cinephiles who doesn't think it's overused. This, however, is a mess, and none of the visual trickery--jittery shots, glitchiness, etc. And I'm not sure if there's something I missed because I'm not as smart as the teenage audience this movie was written for or if it was something the creators of this mess missed, but how many cameras were there supposed to be? And if the answer is "more than one," how does that even work? This was probably the messiest found footage movie I've ever seen. 

The characters are annoyingly stupid. Honestly, they're probably like the average teenager. Their dialogue tries to fool us into thinking they're as clever as teenagers on television sitcoms, but they say "dude" way too much for any adult to take them seriously. And at least one of them is supposed to brilliant. That protagonist could pronounce science-y words, but other than that, I couldn't buy it. 

This story is also poorly paced. They spend so much time showing the characters putting the time machine together, then there's a toy car stuck in a wall, then a dog, then a solid ten minutes where they're using time travel to their advantage, then about fifteen minutes of Lollapalooza, then something that's supposed to pass for dramatic, then a little more time at Lollapalooza, then the part of the movie that should be the real conflict, and then the part of the movie you knew was going to happen, and then the end. This was a time travel movie that had me checking the time over and over. 

I'd love to talk with the people who made this movie and have them explain how any of these pieces actually fit together. I really don't think they do. This is about as perforated as a story can be. 

Lollapalooza's still around? 

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