Project Almanac: PG -13 104 Minutes
1.5 stars
1.5 stars
I have never been a fan of the “found footage” film. This type of film bases its story on the fact
that the characters in the film are recording their experience for posterity. If you have seen “Cloverfield” or “The Blair
Witch Project” you have experienced this type of film. It is always a stretch for the story to
explain why someone is filming the rest of the group. I realize that lots of people use technology
now to record their lives, but no one records so much that they could make a
whole two hour film of themselves and make it a coherent story.
In the new film “Project Almanac” we follow the story of
David Raskin (Jonny Weston) as he is trying to graduate high school and get
himself into MIT. Raskin’s late father
was a scientist and has left many old experiments lying around in the attic and
as David and his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) are trying to find one
that will help David get a scholarship.
In the process they find an old video camera and when they play the
video of a birthday party they see a reflection of 17 year old David at his own
7th birthday.
David shows the video to his high school friends Quinn
Goldberg (Sam Lerner) and Adam Le (Allen Evangelista). They find a box in a cabinet in the floor of
the basement. Inside is a machine that
will allow them to travel in time if they can successfully build it and power
it up. Dad has left instructions but can
they do it? As you can guess they do,
and then find out time travel is not all it’s cracked up to be.
This film is a straight forward time travelling story. Unfortunately it goes too long and the
characters are really not that interesting.
This is partly due to being a “found footage” film and not having time
to explore any of the characters. Also
the filmmakers decided that the actions of the group were more important than
knowing the characters in the film. As a
result we are subjected to a protracted festival concert visit in the middle of
the film.
Also not much of the film was believable. Obviously the time travel is not real but
things like using the car battery from a Prius to power the machine while the
owner is across the street at a party.
This is how the final member of the group Jessie Pierce (Sofia
Black-D'Elia) is recruited. Although the
unbelievable part is more that David knew the Prius had a specific type of
batter y in it that was powerful enough to use.
Of course earlier in the film he had no knowledge of stripping wires, a
basic function in building an electrical device.
There was some reality involved in the film. Teenagers probably would have played the
lottery to win money. As long as they
were old enough to do so legally. Of
course these students were smart enough to assemble the machine, but they couldn’t
figure out that a teacher might ask more questions than you memorized from the
day before during an oral presentation and so they had to go back many times.
One last thing was during the initial test of the machine
the car they sent back in time ended up in the wall of the basement. Yet when they traveled it was always safely
and no one ended up blended into a wall or solid object. Plus, Mom never did find out that they were
experimenting despite the fact that they were making plenty of noise in the
basement.
This film feels long even though it is under two hours in
length. The upside though is during the
concert you do get to see Imagine Dragons perform. If you want to see them and its worth the
price of admission go by all means.
Project Almanac: 3 points for parents
- Sexuality – Teenage boys shooting videos of girls working out in shorts making comments about their bodies. Teens dancing in water at a concert in bikinis. Some are covered by t-shirts that are wet. Two teens are in bed after spending the night together. A girl removes her towel for a guy but her body is not seen.
- Language – Some uses of profanity typical of high school aged kids. Some calling of names.
- Violence/Gore - A scene of bullying and one of getting back at the bully. Someone breaks a window with his hand and it is bloody after that.
