Summer Time Machine Blues

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Jordan

This might just be the best film about time travel ever made, and this is coming from someone who is obsessive over the conceit. Unfortunately it is also extraordinarily hard to get a hold of, only available in Japan as far as I am aware. Thankfully they put english subtitles on the dvd so you can import it.

The conceit is, during a particularly hot summer, an accident leaves the air conditioner remote in the sci-fi club room broken. When a time machine appears the geeks first thought is to go back to yesterday and snatch the remote before it gets destroyed. Things escalate from there.

The main conundrums of time travel are dealt with effortlessly and somehow the resulting film still manages to be hilarious and fun and a great teen summer holiday film as well. It moves at quite a pace and  has an energetic young cast that deliver great characters. It is also so very very Japanese which in my opinion just makes it better.

What is does so brilliantly is structure the narrative so the audience gets the information they need, right when it's needed and rewatching is also joy because it allows you to spot all the time connections in advance like a big jigsaw puzzle.

The other thing I love about it is how it creates a single timeline non-paradoxical (the only way to do time travel properly in my opinion, none of that alternate timeline crap) whilst juggle the tricky notions of free will AND have a happy ending. And all this complicated and sometimes profound nonsense is wrapped up in an extremely entertaining and easy to follow geektacutlar teen-pop comedy.

This is a must see in my opinion, and one of my all time favourite films. Hell, I'd even love to see a remake, if only to get the original dvd a wider release. It's amazing.