Arriving on digital platforms from 29th September is Time Travel is Dangerous, Chris Reading’s sci-fi comic mockumentary which enjoyed great success at the Austin Film Festival last year and a limited theatrical run here in the UK earlier this year. Written by Reading with producers Anna-Elizabeth Shakespeare and Hillary Shakespeare, the film originally started life as a 2020 short entitled The Unreason and stars real-life Muswell Hill vintage shop owners Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson (who previously starred in 2015 short Vintage Blood about a cursed Ouija Board that comes into the possession of a vintage shop owner), as fictional versions of themselves.
The premise is a relatively simple and fun one. Best friends Ruth and Megan run Cha Cha Cha, a (real) vintage shop in London’s Muswell Hill. Of course, the key to any successful vintage emporium is stock and, when our two heroines stumble across a time machine that looks suspiciously like an old fairground dodgem car abandoned around the back of their premises, they embark on trips to the past to find items they can sell for profit in the present day. Enter Guy Henry’s Martin, the pompous and authoritarian president of a local science club. Having grown suspicious of the rare and suspiciously un-weathered relics and antiquaries that the ladies are selling, Martin (Guy Henry, formerly of Holby City) the officious president of a local science club that counts as its members Brian Bovell’s Ralph and Sophie Thompson’s Valerie, who once hosted a Tomorrow’s World-style TV show that the women are big fans of, warns them of the damage that their time-hopping trips are causing to the fabric of the universe. A warning that inevitably falls on deaf ears. Soon enough, a wormhole opens up in Cha Cha Cha’s storeroom and sucks Megan into the netherworld of “the unreason”, a sort of inter-dimensional Bermuda Triangle. Ruth must rally together the misfits of the science club, as well as Johnny Vegas’ Robert (who once worked as Ralph and Valerie’s fake robot co-presenter Botty but who fell out with Ralph when their own time travel exploits pitched them into “the unreason”) to rescue her best friend and bring her back to reality as we know it.
The first thing that you have to commend Reading for is the incredible cast he has managed to recruit for his film. As well as those familiar actors mentioned above, there’s also Tony Way performing his usual hapless sadsack role as Peter, one of the science club members, and Jane Horrocks and Mark Heap as The Aviator and The Regency Dandy; stranded denizens of “the unreason”, who stave off the stultifying boredom of oblivion playing a convoluted game with their fellow stranded compatriots such as Laika, the dog the Soviets launched into space in 1957. Ghosts star Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Laura Aikman star as the younger versions of Ralph and Valerie in the well-realised recreations of early 90s educational TV, with Aikman in particular nailing the cadences of Detectorists star Thompson’s voice. Speaking of voices, in a nod to his role in the 2005 cinema adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Stephen Fry takes up narrative duties, whilst the instantly recognisable booming tones of Brian Blessed are in evidence for the CGI character Gavin the Octopus, another of the occupants of “the unreason”. There’s even a blink and you’ll miss it cameo from Taskmaster‘s Alex Horne and his group The Horne Section as this peculiar netherworld’s house band.
So, as I’m sure you’ll agree, Time Travel is Dangerous is a film with some significant star wattage. In a film that has cast not only two unknowns, the very real-life proprietors of a vintage shop, it’s perhaps unsurprising to see why Reading has opted to gather some big names and familiar faces around them, and it’s arguably a very wise decision as it means that audiences will be drawn in by their names. However, if Reading also opted for a starry supporting cast because he feared that Syratt and Stevenson’s inexperience may show, then he needn’t have worried at all. The owners of Cha Cha Cha deliver note perfect, deadpan performances that play to the strengths of the film’s mockumentary format – talking to camera about their fantastical time travelling in an amusingly blasé fashion. They’re also amusing in the scenes in which they, hopelessly inept, attempt to interact with the past – in reality, a succession of living museums, novelty theme parks and historical re-enactment society events.
I may be biased, hailing from St Helens as I do, but I genuinely believe that Johnny Vegas is a more skilful actor than he is given credit for
It is here though that I have to express a personal reservation. I am not a big fan of the mockumentary format and believe that The Office, a show that ought to have been the final word for such spoofing, conversely became the start for a glut of unfulfilling imitators. Even a great film like Brian & Charles from 2022 suffers from the conventions of the mockumentary and, like that film, Time Travel is Dangerous employs this rather unnecessary and rather passé comic format only when it suits; the amount of times that Reading’s film defies its own logic (where exactly is the documentary crew when accompanying Megan and Ruth on their time travelling – their souped-up dodgem is, after all, only a two-seater?) becomes infuriating.
It’s not just logic that left me finding the mockumentary approach unsatisfying. For all the comedic strengths displayed by Syratt and Stevenson in their filmed interview scenes, the decision to tell the narrative in such a manner makes for a very bitty experience that doesn’t lend itself particularly well to cinema. All too often, the first half of Time Travel is Dangerous feels like you’re bingeing a series of comic webisodes on YouTube or watching a sketch show on BBC3. The reality is you’re watching a premise first explored in Reading’s short film The Unreason being stretched beyond its limitations. There may be some laughs to be had, but I can sympathise with some reviewers who have described this as feeling throwaway and trivial, and confessed to their attention drifting.
Far better comes in the film’s second half, when Reading and the Shakespeare’s settle down and remember that feature films are supposed to have things like a plot and a sense of threat or an obstacle to overcome. Once Megan disappears into the wormhole, Time Travel is Dangerous as to get a little more real, and it’s here that Reading benefits from casting experience actors, with Bovell and Vegas in particular selling the pain and emotional weight of their character, as the two former friends must come together to assist someone in need. I may be biased, hailing from St Helens as I do, but I genuinely believe that Johnny Vegas is a more skilful actor than he is given credit for. As Robert, a man who has all but hidden away from the world after the trauma he experienced in the 90s, his performance easily elicits audience sympathy, but he still manages to make the character humorous too. It’s also in the second half that that the film begins to wear some very 80s influences, with films like Back to the Future, Time Bandits, Labyrinth and Explorers all seemingly being paid homage to. Even 80s music gets a loving salute, with Yazz’s The Only Way is Up playing as Tony Way’s Peter gets the opportunity to be a hero, beating the traffic by deploying his secret invention – a van that can fly!
So, a film of two halves for me, but I guess it depends on your sense of humour. Others may find the first half of the film better than I did. A low budget film, what is achieved here is commendable and, although it occasionally tested my patience, Time Travel is Dangerous is fairly likeable. It boasts good performances as you would expect from such a stellar supporting cast, and good performances, as you might not expect, from its two unknown and non-professional leads.
TIME TRAVEL IS DANGEROUS IS OUT NOW ON DIGITAL PLATFORMS
