Film Review: Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel

Posted in Film, Reviews
By Sam Bathe on 20 Apr 2009

When three friends settle in for another evening at the local pub, even the imaginative minds of the two geeks at the table wouldn’t think up what the next couple of hours lay ahead of them. Obsessed with time travel, when Ray (O’Dowd) meets an attractive young blonde naned Cassie (Faris), who claims to be from the future, on his way back from the bar, he presumes the other two have set him up.

After science fiction doubter Pete (Kelly) takes a trip to the toilet, however, his worst fears are realised, returning to the bar to all the inhabitants brutally murdered, included a scruffy bearded version of himself. Freaked out, Pete creeps back to the toilet where he wait for a moment, and then reappears with everything back to normal. Explaining what just happened to the other two, Ray, Pete and Toby (Woolton) all trace Toby’s steps to try and replicate the misdemeanour, and get shot at will back and forth in time on every exit. Realising the pub’s bathrooms, with a helping hint from Cassie jolt back and forth in time, witnesses a perilous future and no idea how to stop it.

Always full of imagination, FAQ About Time Travel boasts a very clever scrpt that somehow managed not to falls over itself along a complicated jumping timeline. With solid performances from Dean Lennox Kelly and Mark Woolton, it is The IT Crowd’s Christ O’Dowd that gives the film a real on screen presence and witty one-liners when the action time warps step aside.

Considering the small budget and complex of TV actors in the cast, you wouldn’t have been surprised to find FAQ About Time Travel doing a place on the direct-to-DVD calendar but Lionsgate have bought the rights to the film in the UK, with Picturehouse releasing it in America.

Director Gareth Carrivick’s debut film might not split your sides, but it’ll have you brain tied in knots as the charming FAQ About Time Travel loses itself in the time-space continuum with brilliant effects.

★★★★

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