Time travel gets the teen treatment--and worse, the found footage treatment--in Project Almanac, an inspired though uneven “thriller” that is entertaining in spite of its flaws.

Putting the found footage direction aside--which contributed little to the production, but did manage to make my girlfriend dizzy--Project Almanac is a lot like the excellent time travel thriller Primer, except it stars and is made for teenagers, is primarily about teenage love and doesn’t blow your mind. But the movie is entertaining, as long as you accept it as a dumb, breezy adventure.

The movie revolves around a group of high schoolers who stumble upon blueprints for a time machine devised by the deceased father of a genius kid named David. They begin to dabble with time, primarily for their own amusement. But of course, things begin to spiral out of control.

The weird thing about Project Almanac is that it never gets as meaty as you would expect; the movie’s premise is built around David finding a video where he sees a grown-up version of himself at his own seven-year-old birthday party, but his eventual return to that time period really does not play a central role in the plot (even though the filmmakers may think otherwise). My assumption was that the dad’s death had something to do with something, but that’s not that the case.

Ultimately, Project Almanac is about this shy (but super-smart and good-looking) teenager who spends well over an hour attempting to confess his love to the hot girl at school, who from minute one is putting out all the signals that she’s into him.

It’s fucking frustrating.

If there was one thing I would go back in time to change, it would be to tell the editor to cut 15-20 minutes from the middle of the movie. Project Almanac spends way too much time building to the point, and way too much time building up the unnecessary sexual tension between the two leads. Though the movie never builds to a momentous event like I was hoping for, some tightening in the middle would have paid dividends.

Project Almanac is a serviceably entertaining teen thriller, but there is clearly potential wasted.

Review by Erik Samdahl. Erik is a marketing and technology executive by day, avid movie lover by night. He is a member of the Seattle Film Critics Society.