Reviewed by Anne Wollenberg
Stars Stars Chris O’Dowd, Dean Lennox Kelly, Marc Wootton,
Anna Faris, Meredith MacNeill, Dario Attanasio,
John Snowden, John Warman
Written by Jamie Mathieson
Certification UK 15
Runtime 83 minutes
Directed by Gareth Carrivick
This sarky sci-fi comedy is an absolute gem – if you’re a fan of British comedy, that is. Because this is the kind of deadpan humour that only works on this side of the pond. It’s even set in a pub. BBC Films has described it as Shaun of the Dead meets Back to the Future, but it’s more low-key than that. At times it seems to be channelling Spaced, and that's meant as very high praise.
Ray (O’Dowd from The IT Crowd) has just lost his job playing a space ranger at a kids’ theme park, while Pete (Kelly) and Toby (Wootton) have reached the dizzying heights of dressing up as dinosaurs for a living. Ray and Toby are sci-fi fans, Pete thinks they’re nerds, and Ray is sick of him calling it sci-fi and not science fiction or speculative fiction. They do typical pub things, like drinking pints and arguing about whose turn it is to buy some more pints. It’s a perfectly normal drinking session. Even when beautiful Cassie (Faris) shows up claiming to be a time traveller, saying she’s come to a fix a time-leak and expressing her joy at meeting “Ray the Great” before he’s famous, the natural assumption is that it’s a wind-up and/or she’s a stripper.
That is, until they discover the time-leak in the toilets, which may or may not be powered by singing Total Eclipse of the Heart. The boys find themselves getting lost in time – first they accidentally travel back half an hour, to which the only natural response is of course to hide in a cupboard, then they get more and more lost until the pub is in ruins, the only food around is a packet of stale-tasting crisps with a 2094 sell-by date, and they have somehow acquired a massive fanbase.
Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel is just geeky enough without trying too hard. There are plenty of knowing nods to sci-fi and fantasy, from references to a range of films to discussions about chaos theory and the grandfather paradox. As with Spaced, there are plenty of hat-tips to spot for those in the know but missing them won’t stop you from enjoying the film. It does resort to using the cop-out narrative device that is A Very Important Piece Of Paper But We’re Not Saying What’s On It, but that’s forgiveable because everything else works so well. A British comedy about time travel set in a pub and scripted by a stand-up comedian may sound too good to be true, or rather be good, but happily it’s not good, it’s great.
• Official Site
• Screenwriter Jamie Mathieson’s blog
• Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel at IMDb