Time Travel is Dangerous (2024) – Film Review

Director: Chris Reading
Cast: Johnny Vegas, Jane Horrocks, Sophie Thompson
Certificate: 15

By Roger Crow

I always want the latest British sci-fi comedy to be laugh-out-loud funny, but sadly it rarely is. So when offered the chance to review new movie Time Travel is Dangerous, I didn’t hold out much hope. Thankfully this is one of the funniest British sci-fi comedies you will see all year. Imagine if Bill and Ted weren’t a couple of California musicians but instead worked in a retro vintage shop in Muswell Hill.

The protagonists are a couple of likeable ladies who discovered a time machine that actually looks like a bumper car merged with the DeLorean from Back to the Future, which is kind of the point. Anyway, instead of using it to go into the past and explore incredible things, they use it as a way of collecting old objects, or rather new objects at the time and bringing them into the present.

Naturally, the extraordinary collection of antiques comes to the attention of an expert, here played by the ever reliable Guy Henry. He runs a club featuring assorted amateur scientists who make things like invisibility cloaks and goggles that can see one minute into the future. Via flashbacks to an old 1980s TV show involving technology, we are treated to one of the funniest gags in the film involving Johnny Vegas as a robot.

“Brisk pace”

The whole thing is narrated by Stephen Fry, who gives it a terrific Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy feel, and yet it’s far funnier than that big budget 2005 version of Douglas Adams’ best selling novel.

The cast is terrific, especially the always funny Tony Way, who many will know from his work in Ricky Gervais series Afterlife, and more recently Red Sonja.

Look out too for Jane Horrocks, Sophie Thompson, Mark Heap, Brian Bovell, Tom Lenk, Laura Aikman, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson.

This is just the sort of faux documentary that comedy fans, sci-fi fans and general lovers of lighthearted mockumentaries will adore. It ticks over at a brisk pace, and may even become a cult classic.

Roger Crow( Writer )

Adopted Yorkshireman Roger Crow developed a passion for film and TV in the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a published film and TV reviewer since the 1990s; a world travel and restaurant critic since the noughties, and for the past decade has assessed the pros and cons of live gigs and theatre productions around the UK. His ideal day would involve reviewing a performance of Bat Out of Hell, followed by a Pad Thai while being serenaded by Texas on a cruise around Europe.
crowsfeat.com; nostalgiahhh film podcast

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