Freak on Repeat

It doesn't necessarily take a huge, A-list celebrity to make me interested in watching a movie. Sometimes, just the right mix of a few "hey, I know them"s can get the job done. So it was with the low-budget sci-fi movie Time Freak.

Young physics genius Stilman is completely obsessed with Debbie, the girlfriend who just dumped him. His crazed quest to figure out where their relationship went wrong leads him to invent time travel. But his inability to "solve" the "problem" of their breakup even with a technological edge leads him to enlist his best friend Evan to time hop with him and act as an observer. If they can only repair enough mistakes in the past, Debbie will be back together with Stilman and all will be well... or so goes the plan.

Before watching the movie, I knew only that it involved time travel and that it starred three young actors I've enjoyed in various television series. Stilman is played by Asa Butterfield of Sex Education. I realize now that I've never talked about that most excellent series here on the blog (an oversight I really should address at some point), but suffice it to say that this movie calls on the same skillful mix of intelligence and awkwardness that Butterfield displays there. Debbie is played by Sophie Turner from Game of Thrones. That's relevant experience here in playing a character you still find intriguing even though the story isn't always interested in her agency. Evan is played by Skyler Gisondo of Santa Clarita Diet. The clear comic chops he displayed there are put to great use here as the movie's comic relief.

This movie isn't exactly the most original thing you've ever seen; it plays a lot like (500) Days of Summer, with just a little pinch of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure mixed in. It all works mostly because the three main actors are great playing off each other. (Well, it's mostly two pairs: Stilman and Debbie, and Stilman and Evan.) It doesn't dig quite as deeply into the pathology of obsession as (500) Days of Summer, but it does have a fair number of solid laughs along the way -- most of those thanks to Skyler Gisondo's broad character.

There's little chance that Time Freak is going to become one of your favorite movies. But it's easily one of those "if you liked [that], you'll probably like this" movies. (And I could see "[that]" being a fairly wide range of things.) I give the movie a B. If you're looking for some light entertainment with a hint of sci-fi, you might want to give it a try.