I have a weakness for found footage movies so Project Almanac immediately went in my queue. A teenage boy gets into MIT, but cannot afford to go without his widowed mother selling the family home so he and his teen sister explore his father’s basement workshop to see if he has any unfinished projects which could be profitable. The siblings and their friends successfully time travel thanks to the father’s work until disastrous consequences ensue, and the brother breaks the group’s time travel rules to rectify the situation, but only makes things worse.
Time travel movies and TV shows have an inherent set of problems that usually threaten to have the premise collapse on itself, but it did not help that I am too old to enjoy certain movies, and Project Almanac is one of them. I wanted to ditch the teenagers and hang out with the mom, who was played by Amy Landecker from Transparent. The teens’ time travel ambitions were lame: food trucks, car shopping sprees, concerts, standing up to bullies, etc. Our world is doomed.
Also Project Almanac features some problematic gender norms. The mom tells the daughter to put away the laundry. Um, isn’t the son older? Does he have chores? After you sell the house for the college tuition, what will the daughter do? Sure he may be a genius, but she made most of the film-what about her gifts?
Project Almanac best feature is the doppleganger twist. Unfortunately Project Almanac felt too long, and the end shows that Project Almanac may become an unfortunate and inadvertent Groundhog Day sequel that no one wants. Skip Project Almanac and check out Chronicle if you want a found footage movie with a teenage male protagonist.