Time
travel can be dangerous, especially if you have low self-worth, because you
might meet yourself—and it would be super-awkward knowing what you thought of you.
Lug-headed John likes most people, even including himself, so he shouldn’t have
any trouble working with his other selves. Yet, somehow he still quarrels and backstabs
with himself in Tim van Dammen’s Mega
Time Squad (trailer
here), which opens this Friday in limited release.
John
is decent bloke, even though he harbors serious gangster ambitions clearly
beyond his reach. Currently, he is an unglorified errand boy for Shelton, a
suburban Kiwi kingpin. That certainly should not impress Shelton’s younger
sister, Kelly, who has recently moved in with him, but she takes an inexplicable
shine to the lad. To impress her, John uses some inside intel to try to swipe a
bag full of illicit cash, but that puts him in the middle of a power struggle
between Shelton’s outfit and a Chinese gang moving in of their territory.
Fortunately,
along with the cash, John also makes off with an ancient Chinese bracelet that allows
the wearer to jump back in time. Van Dammen never gets very Doctor Who-ish
regarding the details of how this works. Instead, he is more interested in the
stage-managing the growing clique of Johns, who dub themselves: “The Mega Time
Squad.” We do not get any lectures on the dangers of monkeying around with the
space-time continuum, because John really doesn’t need one. The ancient Chinese
demon stalking him makes the point well enough on its own.
Without
question, the visual effects and physical traffic-directing of the various Johns
is downright inspired. Unfortunately, the characterization is not as strong.
Alas, poor John lacks the charm of either Bill or Ted and has nothing that can
compare to the screen presence of Mi Yang’s various doppelgangers in Reset. As played by Anton Tennet, the
dude is just a dude.
Still,
his earnest (if clueless) courtship of Kelly is genuinely endearing. Hetty
Gaskell-Hahn strikes just the right balance between sweetness and sarcasm as
the object of his affections. To be fair, Tennet also does a nice job distinguishing
each John by emphasizing the quirks that surface in each iteration.
“Nice”
really is the word for Mega Time Squad.
It is an amusing film that over-achieves quite resourcefully when it comes to
special effects, but the vibe is a little too laidback for its own good.
Pleasant but not essential, Mega Time
Squad opens tomorrow (2/15) in select cities, including the Gateway Film Center
in Columbus, Ohio.