TIME TRAVEL IS DANGEROUS (2024)
4 stars
Shakespeare Sisters & Candr Pictures. UK cinemas. 28th March
I have to admit I always approach Brit comedies with some trepidation, as they tend to be small scale and are often painfully unfunny, however I have to say I rather enjoyed TIME TRAVEL IS DANGEROUS.
The narration by Stephen Fry sets the scene in the ‘leafy North London suburb of Muswell Hill’. Best buddies Ruth and Megan run a vintage retro shop called Cha Cha Cha — they are played by actual friends Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson, who do indeed run the self same shop. When they conveniently find a time machine out by the bins, which looks like a blinged up fairground dodgems car, they decide to use it to travel back to various time periods and bring back items they can sell in the store.
They keep it a secret and need to keep doing it to keep their greedy landlord at bay, as he wants to turn the place into luxury flats. They find some old tapes of a TV show called ‘The Future, Today’ — which stars Ralph (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) and Botty the robot voiced by Johnny Vegas. On one of them it is claimed time travel is impossible! They know better.
Martin Onions (Guy Henry), chairman of the Technology Engineering Scientific Thought Innovation Society, a group of mostly failed scientist inventors, realises what the duo have been up to — as the time machine was built by one of their members, an older Ralph (Brian Bovell) from the tv show. He was supposed to have destroyed the contraption, but clearly didn’t.
They are told not to use the machine again… but of course they can’t resist, especially as the bills start mounting up, with predictably disastrous results.
Shot as a mockumentary, there’s some good dialogue (especially between the two leads, who are surprisingly good) and amusing silliness with the inventions like rocket boots, a resizer machine and an invisibility overgarment among others — none of which seem to work!
It’s low budget, quirky and all quite daft but it did make me laugh. Guy Henry is hilarious as the uptight Martin. Brian Blessed voices Gavin the Octopus, which will make sense when you watch it. The effects are cheaply achieved but effective enough. It does lose its way a little in the last third.
Steve Kirkham
