Project Almanac

The month of January is known as the film dump month because it's the month that the studios dump all of their big budget catastrophes in the theater and make us suffer through them until Oscar season is over. Well I'm here to tell you that Project Almanac is definitely of a dump of a movie as I had to suffer through that crap fest myself last night. The problem I had with this film started a few weeks ago when I first saw the trailer. I saw that it was one of those lazy found footage films that studios like to put out there because they're relatively cheap to make and for the most part make a decent amount of money, so I immediately gave it a thumbs down to show my disapproval of such nonsense. So rather than pay attention to the trailer, I let my mind wander on fresh things like, why does every villain in the Daniel Craig James Bond movies have a crush on him.

Have you noticed that? For some reason Mads Mikkelson right before punishing Bond (or maybe himself because he couldn't have him) looks at his naked body and says "You take good care of your body Mr. Bond. What a waste!" And then he proceeds to repeatedly hit him in the balls with a big black device that he made for just an occasion. I mean, who doesn't need a homemade black device for ball busting? And then there was Javier Bardem rubbing the thighs of a tied up Bond on a deserted island right before he asked him if it was his first time. Where did that come from? And was that really helping out the plot? I'm not quite sure what they're setting us up for but I wouldn't be surprised to see Hannah Horvat's gay ex boyfiend cast as the next Bond.

And the fact that I spent a fourth of this review talking about homoerotic scenes in 007 movies should let you know what kind of a movie you're in for when you go to see Almanac. The problem with time travel movies is that they never make any sense. A group of mechanically inclined students discover a camcorder in their friend Jonny's attic and once they look at the tape inside it, they see a reflection of the adult version of Jonny at his own seven year old birthday party and freak out.

After some digging, they eventually find his father's plans for a time machine in the basement and after some trial and error, they become successful in building one of their own. At first they do all of the fun things normal kids would think to do with a time machine like changing a grade on a test, getting back at a bully, or making a girl fall in love with them. But it's the last one that causes problems as that kind of meddling begins to change events in history and as a result disasters start to happen all around them in the present.

It's actually not a horrible premise but the problem is MTV productions (yeah you read that right) tries to make it too hip at times while also taking itself way too seriously at other times. There is a long and boring trial period when they try and come up with all sorts of scientific explanations for why this machine could possibly work in the real world. I mean come on, these are high school students, just give them some women's bras to put on their heads while they put a lot of aluminum foil on some antennae and have fake electricity in the background as your explanation for why time travel is possible and get on with it.

There is a 30-40 minute period in the middle of the movie that's actually pretty entertaining as they go to Lollapalooza and see weird things happen when they run into their past selves but sadly you have to survive the intro and the predictable and drawn out ending to experience it.

I suggest that you wait for Netflix and watch this on a sick day versus that of actually spending money in the theater to see this version of smart teens gone wild. I rate it as WEAK.