Project Almanac

There’s not much of a middle ground when it comes to depicting time travel in the movies.

It’s either a relatively straightforward trip to the past or the future with just enough complexity to give your brain a workout (the original and best Terminator is the champ in this regard) or a tangled web of timelines that messes with the existence of everyone involved.

Both can be entertaining, depending on the storytelling talents of the people involved.

Project Almanac takes its best shot at hitting the sweet spot between coherence and complexity but doesn’t quite pull it off.

That said, there’s enough energy and enthusiasm in this tale of teenage time-travellers to make it a fun diversion.

Our hero is brainy high schooler David (Jonny Weston), who clearly has the scientific know-how to attend the prestigious Massachusetts Institute Of Technology but sadly lacks the necessary funds.

When his efforts to obtain a scholarship don’t pan out, David, his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) and his friends Quinn (Sam Lerner) and Adam (Allen Evangelista) rummage through the old experiments conducted by David’s late father in search of something that might impress the bigwigs at MIT.

They never expected to find blueprints for a time machine.

Putting it together, they soon discover they have the ability to travel back minutes, then days and eventually months, which comes in handy when it comes to passing a tough class or winning the lottery.

But when David breaks one of the gang’s rules by travelling back in time solo to have one more chance to win the heart of comely classmate Jessie (Sofia Black D’Elia), he finds upon his return to the present that he’s changed more than he bargained for... and not for the better.

First-time director Dean Israelite’s headache-inducing use of the found footage format (Christina is filming David’s experiments) doesn’t add a lot of urgency or momentum to Project Almanac, but the likeable cast and intriguing possibilities of the story make up for that.