Project Almanac

Director: Dean Israelite
Starring: Jonny Weston, Sofia Black-D'Elia, Sam Lerner, Allen Evangeliste, Virginia Gardner, Amy Landecker
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Runtime: 106 mins. Reviewed in Mar 2015

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Rating notes: Coarse language and sexual references

One can’t complain about a story which shows teenagers enthusiastic about science, engaging in projects, looking for scholarships so that they can continue study. In this case, the hero wants to be accepted to MIT and we see him, at the opening of the film, controlling quite elaborate experiment to submit for a scholarship. He is joined by his two friends, enthusiastic as he is, as well as his sister who is ever ready with the video camera to record everything.

This is one of those films where everything is recorded, hand-held camera even in the least likely situations, straining the credibility sometimes, using the found-footage conventions so popular since The Blair Witch Project. Sometimes this is giddiness-inducing and we might be much happier with more conventional camera work.

David (Jonny Weston) is an enthusiastic scientist, with very happy memories of his dead father who was an expert in technology. The interesting plot device, very evident in the trailers for the film, is that in looking at the video of his seventh birthday, his teenage self appears in the mirror. How could this be? Time-travel, of course!

There is also teenage romance, David admiring, from a distance, the girl of everyone’s dreams, Jessie. Fortunately, despite the reticence, she is attracted to him and joins in the development of the time travel technology. After some experiments, returning objects to one minute earlier, they are ready for the big travel. Being teenagers, or, at least, now being made to look like teenagers in American teenage movies, they opt for some silly adventures, lottery winning, exercising grudges at school and the decision to go back to a music festival and kicking up their the heels. To contribute to the romantic development, David and Jessie go to a wall where people have put answers to the question, “Before the world ends…”. This is where the two really bond. But there is a certain coolness between the two when they return.

Where is the plot to go? Obviously, David wants to remedy the situation between himself and Jessie, which leads to his continued return to the past, by himself, which is against the rules because everybody has to go together. As might be expected, especially thinking of the butterfly effect, one small change causes a chain reaction, including plane crashes and deaths…

The film gets serious at the end, the group realising the risks in going back into the past, the risks in changing things, discovering consequences – and the need to take responsibility. And no one could question this.