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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

'Project Almanac' fails to deliver original story

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In "Project Almanac," a group of teens embark on a journey that is at once reckless and lackluster.

"Project Almanac" (2015) is director Dean Israelite's first attempt at a full-length movie. In the film, David Raskin (Jonny Weston), a brilliant high school student, has just been accepted to MIT. His father, an inventor, died when he was seven, leaving his family in a delicate financial state. MIT doesn't grant him enough financial aid, causing David's mother, played by Amy Landecker, to consider selling their house to pay for tuition.David, with the help of his sister Christina (Ginny Gardner), searches the attic, which is full of his father's old belongings, in hopes of finding an invention that could help him win a scholarship.

 After perusing the attic and basement, David and Christina find a time machine hidden in the floor of the basement. David enlists the help of his best friends, Adam (Allen Evangelista) and Quinn (Sam Lerner), his love interest Jessie (Sofia Black-D'Elia) and his sister to get the time machine working. Completely disregarding any ripple effects, the teenagers recklessly go back in time, leaving disaster in their wake.

The film is shot in "found-footage" style; one person from the group, usually Christina, is always filming, and the audience's perspective is through the camera. This cinematic style is creative -- the most, possibly only, redeeming part of the film. The filming style kept everything going at a consistent pace, even during scenes of pure dialogue and teenage angst. Israelite capitalizes on the creative camera techniques that found-footage allows, but style alone fails to make the film a success.

Perhaps the most disappointing part of "Project Almanac" is the incredibly flat dialogue coupled with unconvincing acting from the majority of the cast. Many of these actors make their feature film debut in "Project Almanac" and are not given enough substantial dialogue or narrative with which to work.  Perhaps because the main characters are teenagers, the dialogue is oversimplified to seem realistic. This simplification, however, leads to meaningless and repetitive conversations. The combination of an inexperienced movie director and a fairly inexperienced cast makes for an underdeveloped product.

The whole premise of time travel has been done many times before -- see "Back to the Future: Parts 1, 2 and 3" (1985, 1989 and 1990) and "Looper" (2012) for examples of cult classics and storytelling innovation. Usually, and in the case of this film, it's done poorly. The only way that "Project Almanac" could have succeeded is if it had an excellent execution or it brought something new and creative to the idea of time travel. Unfortunately, it was unable to do either. The plot was predictable from the start, which is a shame since movies about time travel have the potential to be extremely original and exciting. When time and place are malleable factors, the possibilities are endless, but Israelite fails to push the boundaries. Instead, he settles for a safe plot, and in turn loses the audience's interest fairly quickly. He even tries to weave in a love story between David and Jessie to thicken the plot, but the borderline laughable acting prevents the sub-par storyline from being convincing. Even halfway through the film, the audience has no reason to care about any of the characters -- their personalities and motives are fairly one-dimensional. It is a classic combination of two trite cliches: time-travel-gone-wrong and boy-meets-girl. There are several points throughout "Project Almanac" where a viewer could zone out for 20 minutes, zone back in and not have missed anything even remotely important.

All in all, don't expect much from this time-travel flop; the trailer makes it seem much more action-packed and interesting than it really is. "Project Almanac" suffers from a thin storyline, weak dialogue and unconvincing acting.

 

Summary Don't expect much from this time-travel flop, whose trailer makes it seem much more action-packed and interesting than it really is. Project Almanac suffers from a thin storyline, weak dialogue, and unconvincing acting.
2 Stars