Projet Almanac

I liked Project Almanac. It didn't necessarily excite me. And I did scratch my head a few times. But ultimately, I liked it. It had an interesting, if slow moving, story. It stayed grounded, or at least tried to, and did it's very best to legitimize time travel as a possibility, even if it doesn't do a very good job of actually explaining the whole thing. Certainly some things are silly, like explaining being able to control the time machine with a cell phone as cell phones 'having enough power to put a rocket in space', but these don't really take away from a lot of the fun dealing with the time travel element.

The story is pretty simple, but actually feels heart felt. David, a genius level teenager newly accepted to MIT, finds himself short on the money to pay his tuition there. This inadvertently leads him to discover an unfinished time machine his absent father left hidden in his basement. While it takes a while for the time travel elements to ramp up, there is fun to be had in seeing these kids build, experiment, and ultimately successfully travel through time. The film does a good job in allowing us to escape certain illogical elements, like how a group of teens with a fairly limited budget could create a fully functioning time machine, much less create one when no one else on earth seemingly could. David and his buddy Adam are already established as being geniuses from the moment the film begins. So, it's not much of a leap that together they could figure out how to complete the already crafted instructions and blueprints sitting in front of them. You could even say there's legitimacy to the use of the found footage style they went for. They even comment on the use of the camera, which at least shows they recognize that it's there.

However, despite some explanation that helps solidify the camera's constant presence, the film , like so many found footage films, would have benefited from simply being shot like a typical narrative. The film even goes the lengths to, strangely enough, be somewhere in between. We see edits that don't make sense for someone whose recording and we have music play over things like a montage. It's just bizarre to see and hear these things play out over a film that is supposed to pretend to be found off camcorder footage. And these production elements aren't bad, they're just out of place and show the film could have benefited from simply eschewing the found footage style all together. There's also some head scratching moments throughout that can be eye-roll-inducing, but I tend to be able to suspend my disbelief, so it didn't bother me as much.

The film overall isn't one I'd probably tell people to run out and see. But I'd certainly tell them it's not a bad film. Far from it, it's a surprise in the sub genre of found footage. And while it doesn't reach the heights of Chronicle, which I consider to be the peak of found footage, I do think it's one of the better found footage films.

Project Almanac is a sci-fi found footage film about.... no, not horror.... time travel. I thought it was an interesting way to show a time travel film and really made sense when you were watching it, as to why they would be filming, so it helped to know why they always had a camera out. Overall i would have to say that this was a pretty fun film and doesn't go too over the top with the confusing back and forth through time stuff that other time travel films do. It is pretty easy to understand for a general audience and that helps to have more people follow the plot but can make it a little more predictable. I didn't feel that this was all that predictable though, there were quite a few moments that i could not have guessed and some others that were foreshadowed a little too much. So in terms of the plot it was very coherent for 96% of the film and i have to say was also interesting, just the last 2 minutes of the film for me got unnecessarily complex and ruined the fun adventure the rest of the film felt like.

Also, while this was a found footage film there were many times throughout the film where i was able to forget about that. The shaky cam and awkward camera angles that do bother me in other found footage films didn't have the same effect in this film. Some of the ways that sections are shot with a mounted camera or in an environment that would be shot with a moving camera in a regular film helped to take my mind off the fact that this was just another found footage film. So to make it a found footage film but have elements of just a regularly shot sci-fi film i thought really elevated the film.

In terms of the characters i thought they were all very well written, sometimes a little over exaggerated in terms of their emotions but as a group i thought they worked pretty well. I also have no idea who these actors were but they were all pretty good, no standouts but they were all good to watch. Unfortunately where this film let me down a little was the first section of the film before all of the funky time travel stuff begins, it was just a little too slow and i would have liked for them to just cut to the chase and get to the time travelling without the setup that didn't really add anything to the film except for a few minor plot points later in the film. In the end this sci-fi time travel film does a good job at creating a fun and easily understandable story with pretty good characters. But is let down by a fairly unnecessary first section and a very unnecessarily confusing ending. - 7.3

The teenager David Raskin (Jonny Weston) is a genius that dreams on joining the MIT. He has a crush on Jessie Pierce (Sofia Black-D'Elia) but he is too shy to date her. When David finds the design of a time machine that belonged to his father, he decides to build the device together with his friends Quinn Goldberg (Sam Lerner) and Adam Le (Allen Evangelista) and his sister Christina Raskin (Virginia Gardner). Soon Jessie joins the group and becomes David's girlfriend. When their experiment gets out of control and changing the future, David decides to fix the problems making them worse.

"Project Almanac" is a sort of "The Butterfly Effect 4", with a similar storyline with many paradoxes. Each time that the teenagers interfere with the past for personal profit, the future changes and the responsible David tries to fix it. Unfortunately the funny adventure is ruined by the awful camera work. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Projeto Almanaque" ("Project Almanac")

David Raskin (Jonny Weston) applies to MIT with the help of his friends Quinn Goldberg (Sam Lerner), Adam Le (Allen Evangelista), and his sister Christina Raskin (Virginia Gardner). He could only get a small partial scholarship and his mother is looking to sell their home to raise tuition money. While looking for his late father's experiments in the attic, David finds an old video of his 7th birthday but it has his older self in the video. He and his friends find parts of a time travel machine hidden in his basement. They reconstruct it and travel back in time with his crush Jessie Pierce (Sofia Black-D'Elia).

This uses the found footage idea and the shaky cam moves get tiresome. It adds nothing and has no real internal logic. The kids are all excited and hyper. Obviously, it's intended to inject energy into the movie. That also gets tiresome. The big turning point is Lollapalooza which only adds to the superficiality of the whole enterprise. The premise starts out well but the movie is a long slow downward slide. Its initial potential slowly fades away.

Found footage movies are often pretty predictable and sketchy, but project almanac isn't. Unlike other movies of this genre, the pace is kinda slow, which is appropriate for the story. When you build a time travel machine, it is normal that it takes multiple attempts before it works. Even though sometimes you may wonder why the characters are still filming their journey, it's not disturbing enough to prevent you from focusing on the plot, which is a good thing. There's also a good love story and some funny moments, in addition to a breath taking last act. I'd compare it to the Canadian movie Chronicles.

Overall you'll have a great time watching this movie, even more if you are familiar with this genre.