Project Almanac (2015), PG-13, ★★

Cool! A time machine!

Have you wondered whenever you regret something or want to alternate an event in your life to create a better future or maybe pull a prank on someone who deserves to be? Yes, but I will not reveal which I would to undertake. Anyway, these time travel movies seem to factor the essence of fun for somebody to experience: The Back to the Future trilogy is a prime example because you care about the characters and want them to be happy but you have to change a few things. This movie is sort of similar to that. They try to change things for the better but it also has some consequences. The director wanted to set in a decent story for the better but his method of shaky-cam and found footage was consequential, distracting and a tad nauseous that I had a little headache after the movie was over.

David Raskin (Jonny Weston) is a high school senior who is videotaping an experiment for a scholarship at MIT with the help of his sister, Christina (Ginny Gardner), who is fond of filming behind the camera, and his friends, Adam (Allen Evangelista) and Quinn (Sam Lerner). After a faulty experiment, a few weeks later, David gets an envelope from MIT saying he was accepted into the institution but with a $5,000 scholarship instead of the proposed $45,000. Because of that, he is disappointed.

We learn that David has a crush on a girl named Jessie (Sofia Black-D'Elia), Quinn flunked his chemistry test and Christina is being bullied. Back home, Christina and David find a tape of his 7th birthday party, when it was the last day that their Dad was alive before he died in a car crash. However, David notices some details in the video and that, he, in his current age, is in the video. He shows it to Adam and Quinn and they are both surprised.

The gang, including Jessie, head to David's basement to find and uncover a secret hatch in the floor that contains blueprints for building a time machine. After a few failed tests, they steal hydrogen canisters from the school to charge the batteries but they keep short-circuiting. However, after one test goes well when they send Christina's red toy Corvette through time and they see that it did go through time when it's fused to the wall, the gang decides to go back in time to one night ago. The gang activate it and are disoriented for a brief time, but they can actually see their own selves. However, there will be consequences that has nothing to do with them but involving innocent people.

Hey. Adam won the lottery! Woo-hoo!

The movie has, again, a decent story in there somewhere with teenagers trying to maybe redeem themselves or maybe set revenge on somebody else just to have their reputation at ease, however, the humorous elements sort of bring it to originality and life. But, it does mix the humorous tone with the suspense quite too well because they go beyond the distance trying to improve or give themselves a second, third or fourth chance at something and maybe just throw drinks at somebody. The biggest problem is that the premise does not go anywhere: it is just a cool idea that does not progress on-screen.

All of the teenage characters are not memorable and I could not buy one sense of reality from any of these guys. Plus, there are some clichéd moments during the time-travel that bugged me like somebody wanting to fall in love with somebody because he is shy and therefore, he has to go back to be confident and get laid. That is the purpose why he wants to jump-start? The dude is in high school and does not care about getting in to MIT now.

It is a cool premise with some nifty visual effects but they are difficult to see because the camera keeps moving and shaking in almost every scene and therefore, it's hardly an experience to conceive as a good time at the movies. I think that Hollywood has to stop making found-footage movies because they are getting old and people want to just SEE and LOOK what is going on instead of trying to movie their heads for most of the movies constantly and be nauseous at the end. The time travel crosses it with a neat premise but its technique and organization needs the filmmakers to jump-start again and re-write the script all over again to make it better.

**