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
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 79 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.
EXTRAS None, for which it loses a star