With its sheer goofball silliness, and unexpectedly great visual effects work, this ridiculous hellzapoppin’ spectacular from Canadian comic and director Matt Johnson will win you over. But if, like me, you’re coming to this from outside the existing fanbase for his web and TV comedy Nirvanna the Band the Show, you will need some time to catch up, and to acclimatise to the gags and the lo-fi klutz aesthetic. (Although, as I say, the downbeat indie look does cunningly coexist with some sensational digital trickery.)
Johnson had a breakthrough hit in 2023 with BlackBerry, about the once vital and then tragicomically obsolete handset device. Now he and his writing-performing partner Jay McCarrol give us a nerd comedy about time travel, inspired by Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future. But this comedy is not interested in BTTF’s Freudian observations about men’s relationship with women. In fact, women play zero role in this. It’s more in the infantilised male spirit of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey in Wayne’s World, or Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.
