Review of See You Yesterday (2019) by Robhiengler — 01 Jul 2020

BLACK TO THE FUTURE - part of the black lives matter collection.

CJ I have to say is the best most likeable characters ever created - her constant anger, recklessness, aggressiveness, her unwillingness to listen to anyone, sassy attitude and ineptitude in explaining anything. Hilariously she gas lights her own friend. If she was a male character she’d be accused of toxic masculinity but fortunately she isn’t and thus is a strong independent young woman - no double standards here you haters /s.

If you think CJ has a character arc you’d be dead wrong, she doesn’t change or learn anything from her experience, except one thing she throws her away her morals and uses her sex appeal to manipulate a school acquaintance into getting what she wants - you go girl!

As a time travel film the only good part is the cameo appearance of Michael J Fox, but unfortunately that’s where any charm or intelligence in the script goes out the window. Here we have some genius kids building a time machine, with no context as to why or motivation, nor how they could afford the tools or components to do so, and aside from Sebastian a complete lack of appreciation for consequences of meddling with the time line AKA CJ ‘I do whatever I want, no man gonna tell me what to do’ Walker. At least Doc Brown was an old man with a lifetime of experience and knowledge and a science pariah - I could suspend my disbelief. I think what Spike Lee is really saying is the white CIA is suppressing these black geniuses from just inventing time travel, fusion, FTL travel etc.

The props and CGI are second rate, one of the most hilarious moments is when their friend opens up a case to reveal gold painted ‘quantum’ micro ATX motherboards. Then later he’s repairing/modifying it using a soldering iron. Regular MOBO’ s have machines to solder on SMT’s, even if you were doing it manually you’d need specialist equipment. The entire backstory and premise is some poor Nickelodeon-level of ass-hattery.

Now onto why RT has rated this a 95% and that’s because of it’s BLM credentials, where we see one dimensional evil villain cops stir things up with CJ’s brother and eventually shoot him for no reason. The last last attempt CJ was pretty unpersuasive, you would have thought saying: ‘come quick we need your help, so and so is getting beat up etc’ or if two of you turn up - would be better that getting your stubborn older brother to believe something unbelievable in 30 seconds. I’m sure some Aesop fable about crying wolf applies here.

I guess the message of the film is CJ and black women should never give up even if all the male characters have resigned themselves to their fate. The Ending:

Some people say the ending was crap and left open. The reality is she keeps jumping back in an infinite loop f*cking things up, quite sad and dark really - a better title for this film may have been bLooper.

In summary, sub-average film riding on its woke credentials and would appeal to kids under the age of 8 if it weren’t for its TV-MA rating.