Review of Project Almanac (2015) by Nathan M — 02 Feb 2015

Can we be done with found footage films? This one eventually justifies itself, but throughout its run time, you're just wondering, "Why are they filming this?" Especially when one character, about 30 minutes in says, "From now on... Record everything." And I found myself wondering, "Isn't that what you've been doing all along?" There was no need for this film to be a found footage film, and if it hadn't been, some of the poor writing tropes could have been avoided and we could have focused on some better storytelling.

Project Almanac is pretty fun at times, but it's dumb fun. This is one of the dumbest time travel movies I've seen, because while you're watching it you're thinking, "That wouldn't work." "You're breaking your own logic and rules." "What happens to that thing you set up earlier?" But Project Almanac doesn't care about this or even care about much other than having a good time.

In that way, the film really captures what it means to be a teenager. I mean sure, this is a film where you have kids with genius level IQs, who are just like everyone else. Sure, we can build a time machine, but we drive beater cars and talk about how girls don't like us. So maybe they don't get how teenagers work, but they get what teenagers like.

I watched this film thinking, if I was 13, I would love this film. The romance is so immature, that only a middle school student would dream of having a similar romance. But that is who this film is aimed at, and in that case, the film works. I couldn't really fall for it, but I can appreciate the fact that it was at least fun. It wasn't dark, it wasn't boring, even if it wasn't smart or even very insightful, at least it was fun.