Sometimes, a title hides the way the film you’re about to watch will move. Other times, it says exactly what kind of world you’re about to step into. This latter segment is the realm in which It’s Hard Not to be Romantic About Time Travel falls into.
The premise is simple: an ex-con named Swan’s weed-loving best friend Randall has decoded the secret to romantic time-travel that has been hidden in the film Somewhere in Time. To combat this secret information from getting out, the rest of Hollywood has flooded the zone with their constant stream of impossible time-travel films. He’s deduced that the real secret to time-travel hides within copious amounts of marijuana, falling asleep, knowing what someone looks like and where they’ll be at some point in time, and love. This he uses to go back to the party that was taking place in the house where Randall lives at the same time as the robbery Swan was framed for. There, Swan meets an incredibly charming young true crime podcast aficionado who apparently likes ‘em a little scruffy. They flirt and try to “solve” the crime. Well, they mostly flirt and make brief mentions of the crime. Randall spends the time eating edibles and having adventures...and being chased by “the golden girls.”
If this sounds like a lot to pack into twelve minutes, you’re right, but the script by director Michael Charron is just about perfect and hits the beats at every moment. It’s a remarkable act of content stuffing, especially when he’s also able to give things time to land with appropriate impact. The direction is incredibly solid, and the cinematography and editing by Steven Gunter only helps put the entire package together in a way that feels both polished and immediate. That’s a fun realm for a work of fiction that literally dwells in the not-so-distant past. Production wise, it’s a simple series of locations made to feel foreign through character interaction, which probably speaks to the actors ability to play the room.
Let me explain:
There is a genre-acting theory that a character makes the setting. If a character reacts to the environment in a way that shows the foreignness of what is otherwise a normal situation, it is what’s establishing the setting far more than any prop or piece of set design. Hence an actor can change a romance into a horror film, a science fiction film into a stoner comedy. That’s what’s going on here, because there are elements of romance, stoner comedy and science fiction all roller-up into a single, tight, twist-ended package, and there is a character who is embodying each of those settings with their performance in the piece. Randall provides the stoner comedy with not only the prodigious amount of herb he eats, but by a reaction to the world that is a little bit Cheech and a whole lotta Chong. Swan delivers the romance by his focus on the new woman he’s just met at the expense of the weird, messed up situation he’s in vis a vie his time travel. Liv provides the science fiction by reacting to the world she finds herself in with a happy mix of confusion, disassociation, and utter reaction. They are creating different genre settings within the same visual frame. I love that.
And I should mention that Liv, played by Alyssia Rivera, is absolutely eye-gluingly perfect in her role. She’s insanely charismatic, and certainly out of Swan’s league, but more importantly, she’s believable in a world where suspension of disbelief is exactly as difficult as the plot it works in. None of this should be easy to accept, but somehow she makes it feel so incredibly natural. We tie into Liv, and her placement in the universe (multiverse?) is one of the most important drivers of the story. She’s an actress to watch.
I would be remiss to not mention that another film I’ve written of lately, Fireflies at Dusk, dwells in the same cinematic region. In fact, it turns out that the filmmakers know each other. They both reference, obliquely in the case of Fireflies and explicitly here, Somewhere in Time. Both make excellent use of the idea of that long-ago premise to explore contemporary cinematic ideas. Really, there’s just no way an audience who likes to laugh would ever reject either of these. While Fireflies at Dusk is about the class between past and present, It’s Hard Not to be Romantic About Time-Travel is far more about the actual petty complications of time traveling stoners, a problem that we are certain to encounter as the technology becomes available and decriminalization spreads ever-wider.
I will also say that this is a film that shows things like Dude, Where’s My Car are valid expressions of science fiction. I have long held that to be not only true, but vital to a genre that often eats its own tail and says that it’s reinventing itself. Science fiction comedy does not always have to be high-brow (like Buckaroo Bonzai) nor even middle brow (like Teenagers from Space) but can comfortably sit among the types of comedy that appeal to smart teens and 50-somethings who occasionally run Pineapple Express-Ted double feature evenings. I love when we still have to think, but might still get a classic He’s so wasted! Laugh out of things.
Keep an eye out for this one.
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