FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL
UK, 2009, 83 minutes. Colour.
Chris O’ Dowd, Marc Wootton, Dean Lennox Kelly, Anna Faris.
Directed by Gareth Carrivick.
This is a film for science fiction buffs – and nerds.
It focuses on three friends who meet at a pub and discuss their love for science fiction – as well as their dislikes. The film opens with Chris O’ Dowd (Bridesmaids, Gulliver’s Travels) working with children in a museum and frightening them – and getting the sack. He meets up with his two friends, Marc Wootton and Dean Lennox Kelly, who are dressed as dinosaurs at a theme park. They then adjourn to a pub where they discuss science fiction and become involved in a conundrum, time-travelling.
Ray (Chris O’ Dowd) goes to buy some drinks and encounters Cassie (American comedian, Anna Faris – The House Bunny, The Scary Movies). She is from the future and this leads to time travel, the three finding everybody in the pub dead, finding their future characters being successful, threatened by someone who wants to get them back to the present (Meredith MacNeill) and finally getting back to the present, the alternate characters disappearing – and the three facing the reality. But then, a portal opens, Cassie appears and they decide to go into the future.
The film is complex, as is any film about time travel. However, it is played for amusement and some laughs, parodying science fiction while showing great devotion to the genre and the various conventions. There are lots of movie references.
Chris O’ Dowd is a genial screen presence. Marc Wootton does dumb comedy quite well, Dean Lennox Kelly has to act more as the straight man.
The film is amusing – but only patient devotees will stay with it.
The director has a long history in television.
1. Science fiction, comedy, spoof?
2. The popularity of science fiction, the references, the scenarios, the hopes of the nerds for success with their scenarios in the future?
3. Time travel stories, conspiracies? The realism and the spoof? The title?
4. The opening, Ray, the kids, frightening them, getting the sack? Pete and Toby, slackers, dressed as dinosaurs?
5. The pub, the conversation, Ray’s respect for science fiction, the rules, the experts? Comments on Star Trek and Star Wars etc?
6. Ray, the drinks, meeting Cassie, her story, the explanation of the Editors, taking people at their peak moment (like Kevin Costner after Dances with Wolves)?
7. The three and their characters, their friendship, Toby as slow, foolish? Pete as deadpan? The travel, going through the rooms, discovering everybody dead in the pub?
8. The future, their future selves, observing them, the picture on the wall, Toby as a Jesus figure, fame, the notes and their wanting to know how they became famous?
9. Millie, her arrival, friendship, helping them to return? The truth of her being an Editor?
10. The return, watching their past selves, eventually time being restored, the page and the beer on it?
11. The puzzle, whether to keep the page or not? Millie and her confrontation? Cassie and her reappearance?
12. Cassie, confronting Millie? Her explaining that she and Ray had been together for two years?
13. The portal opening, the decision whether to go or not, their identities – and the final credits with Toby and his alternate self pursuing him? It all being too complicated?
14. A film for the fans and the film buffs?
