Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel (2009)

This has had some rave reviews which just goes to prove that you can't please all of the people all of the time. No pun intended! Or may it was.It's a small-time - ha! - British movie written by one person (who has written for Dr Who so perhaps that says it all). You can't help but wonder if a second pair of eyes would have helped - other than the director's.It's ultimately about three 'blokes', two in particular who are not the brightest. Yes, cue hilarious comedy!Or not.The plot is fairly straight forward although the journey is convoluted with multiple time trips causing chaos and confusion for the characters. The writer must have used a spreadsheet to keep track so clever and well done there. However, it all seems rather over-played.So no, I didn't find it funny or original or particularly well done.It scores because it's time travel and we do need more time travel movies - although preferably good ones - and, of course, it features Anna Faris although occasionally she does seem like a fish out of water.Ah well. Perhaps next time...

With some better acting and a sharper script this movie could have been a lot better than it was.What it is however is a fun romp through the trials and tribulations of time travel, poking good fun at its "rules" and issues. As well as classic Science Fiction in general. Sharp eyed views will see homages to "Them", "The Sound of Thunder", "Back to the Future", "Close Encounters", "Battlestar Galacticia" and others.Confined to a pub was a nice little bit as it kept all the action bottled up into one neat package and didn't require the exploration of the outside world.It's clever and fun.Now for the bad news. Well you have to admire the situation and the dry British humor (it was a BBC production after all)...the movie lacks any big laughs. Or even that many small ones. In better more comedic hands this could have been laugh out loud funny.Like I said it's clever and fun and should find an audience...but it's not "funny" and that's something a "comedy" should be.The question is...would I watch it again or pay money to see it? Yes, yes I would. I just think with a slight sharper edge to the humor and better actors this could have been so much more.

Yes, I understand a lot of people just can't go there - science fiction films... or SF (which can also stand for Speculative Fiction) and one step further - SF films about time travel - has many more people racing for the nearest exit, but here's one so ingenious I'm putting it up there on the top shelf as one of the 10 best cinematic chronology crunchers ever made.When F-A-Q-A-T-T was released in its native UK it was promoted with a very Brit-centric proclamation, "It's Doctor Who meets Shaun of the Dead", and that's not invalid except I don't recall the good Doctor ever starting an adventure in a pub with three pints of stiff stout under his belt.Chris O'Dowd as Ray, Dean Lennox-Kelly as Pete and Mark Wooton as Toby are the pragmatist, the cynic and the dreamer. We collect a few hints regarding their common aspirations - escape their dead end jobs, become famous, rich and get laid but let's face it in their rather sedate time stream none of the above is gonna be happening.So how is it these larger lads end up in a rift that threatens the very fabric of time and space itself, in the process becoming so famous they have fans who hold look-alike parties in their honor! And no, I'm not trying to up sell - that really happens... in the future... and they don't even have to leave the pub to find out about it.You're thinking, "Oh, that's a cheap way to do a movie, build just one set - a shabby pub interior - all stock standard bits and bobs and there's the art direction budget cut in half, right?" Well, yes, but the fact that the location of the story is so constrained, our heroes firmly rooted in one place, it becomes almost impossible for these imagineers to navigate away from the inevitable consequences when they ....OK, OK no Spoilers! Not in this time stream.Let's just say it's delightful to see how the long argued paradoxes of time travel theory become intrinsic to the action, and new complexities are built on the shoulders of other complexities... like Cassie, a time traveling plumber... of sorts... with self confidence issues delightfully played by Anna Faris. She arrives just at the right moment to repair a leak in time and there we are, 30 minutes into the film and everything is fixed and it looks like Ray might even get laid! As if! The boy's hopelessly under exercised hormones and a string of questionable choices result in even more temporal turmoils... and thanks to that we, the audience, have lots more fun! Now, most time travel, or time manipulation movies, generally suck at the timey-wimey bits... really... do not get me started on "Looper" or "Source Code" - movies that relegate the clock conundrums to second or third plot place behind lots of scenes involving good guy / bad guy chasing games... you can throw Terminator in there as well.There are of course exceptions - The "Back to the Future" movies, especially the second film, where the impact of future on past IS the driver of the plot and the challenges for the lead characters come from the impact of alternate futures and pasts on each other.F-A-Q-A-T-T truly man's up to the task and exuberantly throws itself into the mucky stuff of Grandfather and Chaos paradoxes and the really big issue, "Why you should absolutely not have sex with anyone while time traveling!" For once, an SF film created by people who clearly understand the finer points of genre with which they are working.The script is a little fire cracker, a slow burner to start but then exploding into a life of its own. There's a great idea that starts playing with time before we're really even thrust into it and that's to have Ray tell of an experience in flash back, in the middle of what has, to that point, been a chronologically ordered plot - it works, it works very very well and is not at all confusing.These playful story telling techniques makes for some internal treats relating to other time travel films... So, thank you writer Jamie Mathieson and director Gareth Carrivick for not treating your audience as if they are mentally defective or incapable of processing the paradoxes and thank you also for being creative enough to do this all with great wit and some really sharp dialogue.High five to the three lead actors, especially Chris O'Dowd who's comic timing and recurring foot in mouth exchanges with Anna Faris prove he's one of the best.And Dean Lennox Kelly's embracing of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" proves that even the manliest of men really do have a pop diva inside them wanting to get out! The way the joke is played once and then revisited just doubles the fun.So why and how did F-A-Q-A-T-T fall between the cracks of public attention? Well, the reviews were a little mixed... OK they were unkind.... with observations like "mildly diverting" and "feels like a stretched out TV pilot..." wow, thanks for killing the British film industry there guys... like those comments are gonna make anyone line up at the nearest multiplex box office.So, track down a copy and take note - it's one of those films that has more clues after all the thank yous to dolly grips, best boys and honey wagon drivers have rolled up the screen...Yes, there's more movie after the movie!

This is a fun, entertaining movie not to be taken to seriously. It was very entertaining. A comedic take on time travel. I ran across it on Amazon Prime and it had a four star rating so I thought I'd give it a shot. Three average guys are in a pub, one of who just got fired; they are SciFi buffs talking about time travel end up wrapped up in a time travel debacle. I would not call it hilarious but it was fun. It's in the same Genre as Galaxy Quest. A light hearted romp through the SciFi time travel zone.Anna Faris plays in it. We all know and love her from the Scary Movies. She plays a small part but important to the movie. I really liked the Giant ant they threw in.