Like courtroom drama and the mafia, time travel is a subject filmmakers will never tire of exploring. There are subgenres of the time traveling theme, each reflecting the filmmaker’s concern for “convincing” the audience time travel is possible. The more romantic versions (Kate & Leopold, The Time Traveler’s Wife) never worry about the “how” of time travel; it just happens. The hard sci-fi stories delve into great detail about the mechanics of time travel (Looper, Primer, Back to the Future) as well as the myriad paradoxes and ripple effects that could result from time travel. Lastly, there are the “Time travel happens because Science!” movies, the ones in which the validity of traveling forward or backward in time is never addressed because the film is either A) set in the future where time travel is possible because of (unspecified) advanced technology, or B) about a person stumbles upon time travel technology invented by some third party so it has to work (and be safe).
This third category is the most common -- there are too many to list here -- and most often makes for a disappointing movie. Project Almanac isn’t necessarily a bad movie or an unworthy entry in the time travel canon. It’s simply an underdeveloped and unpolished concept, a fact the filmmakers attempt to mask by throwing scientific jargon at the audience to distract them from the perpetually flawed logic and poor storytelling. Project Almanac pretends to be a high concept movie but never convinces the audience of anything more than time travel is possible because science can do things.
The brilliant young mind at the center of Project Almanac is David Raskin (Jonny Weston), a high school senior attempting to win a scholarship to MIT. With his two best friends, Quinn (Sam Lerner) and Adam (Allen Evangelista), David discovers that his father, who was a scientist, nearly completed a time machine before his death. After a lot of technical and confusing science talk, the three friends attempt to finish what David’s dad started. If you’re worried the film’s technical language will be hard to follow, don’t worry. David’s sister, Christina (Virginia Gardner), is there to ask plenty of questions solely for the sake of explaining (but not at all explaining) to the audience how they are going to time travel.
Along for the ride is popular/hot girl Jessie Pierce (Sofia Black-D’Elia) for whom David harbors strong feelings. After many false starts (all of which indicate nothing but utter danger), the three teens are able to make the machine work. They start small, but soon are able to travel as far back as three weeks. But, as anyone who has seen a time travel movie knows, tampering with the past most often leads to tragic consequences in the present.
For a first feature film, director Dean Israelite does a commendable job maintaining coherence throughout the film. Aside from a few gaps in the storylines, Israelite has built a perfectly acceptable movie for its intended audience. The most unpleasant part of the movie, aside from the lazy script by co-writers Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan, is the reliance on the found footage/film-everything-on-a-cell-phone style that is intended to appeal to millennials but is just hackneyed and distracting. Had Israelite insisted on standard objective storytelling, Project Almanac could have been a much better film.
Project Almanac is a genuine but ultimately flawed attempt by its creative team, but not a complete failure. Teens may find it entertaining, but anyone hoping to be challenged by the film will be sorely disappointed.
Grade: C
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