The 1960 film The Time Machine (free on YouTube), based on H. G. Wells’ 1895 novel, arguably served as the introduction to time travel as a key plot device in cinema, spawning an entire subgenre of science fiction/fantasy films.
Today’s film is, of course, a little corny: star Rod Taylor plays the anomalous two-handed scientist hero. His titular invention finds him plunging into a future world where the supposedly advanced human population of the Eloi (blond-haired, handsome Aryans frolicking in a pastoral apparent utopia) are periodically pillaged by a deviant race of subterranean hairy, glowing-eyed Morlocks, Welles’s extrapolation of Victorian-era class warfare. (Really, eat the rich.)
At the end of the film (spoiler alert), Taylor manages to return to his own days to tell his story, only to return to the future, where we assume he will save the Eloi from their ultimate complacency.
The use of time travel to save humanity would become a recurring theme in other time travel films, most notably Avengers: Endgame and Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
But on the other side of this coin are low-stakes time travel, in which temporary tourists are primarily interested in some kind of personal satisfaction. This year, two Canadian-produced films explore this subgenre.
Time travel doesn’t get more trippy than in Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie (streaming on Crave), an extrapolation of the cult series (streaming on Disney+). Like the TV series, the film is so Hogtown-specific that Canadians in the rest of the country might roll their eyes at the apparent condescension of the whole Toronto thing.
That would be a shame: the film is an absolute blast following musician couple Matt Johnson and Jay McCarroll, whose lifelong dream is to play a gig at the legendary club The Rivoli on Queen Street (not coincidentally, the birthplace of The Kids in the Hall).
Scheming Matt concocts a publicity stunt to parachute into the SkyDome (aka the Rogers Center) via the CN Tower, a literal mind-bending misadventure that comes damn close to being a success if not for the inconvenient retractable roof. Plan B involves a scheme to disguise themselves as time travelers, a ruse that ultimately succeeds (thanks to the cessation of soft drinks), transporting the pair to a future where McCarroll will become a famous pop star once Johnson is out of the picture.
Like the TV series, the film alternates between scripted comedy and improvisational sequences filmed on the streets of Toronto, mainly on Queen Street.
You don’t have to be a Torontonian to appreciate this, but it helps. Not many movies feature a joke about Jian Ghomeshi.
Even the time-traveling MacGuffin is uniquely Canadian. Orbitz is a real soft drink with little globules of gelatin floating in each bottle, a perfect ingredient for the film considering it too was a Canadian failure story that was infamously discontinued in 1999 due to poor sales and a factory breakdown.
Shot in Winnipeg in 2024, writer-director Ben-David Grabinski’s Mike, Nick, Nick and Alice (streaming on Disney+) is an unlikely mix of romance and gangland intrigue with a time-travel element that throws everything into a time loop.
Time travel is the invention of a theoretical scientist and powerful man named Simon (Ben Schwartz). Simon asks mafia wife Alice (Eiza Gonzalez) to finance his work.
After investigating the device, Alice’s killer husband Nick (Vince Vaughn) shows up at the door of his friend and partner Mike (James Marsden) with a mission to save the life of someone near and dear to both of them.
Notable Plot Point: This is Future Nick, so named because he’s from six months in the future, and the plan involves bringing in Present Nick, who clearly isn’t thrilled about the prospect.
Even without the time travel element, the plot is pretty convoluted, or at least it would be, except that Grabinski likes to spice things up with wacky pop culture references, like: Who was the worst guy on Gilmore Girls?
Seeing Vaughn engage in this kind of levity may seem startling, given the dark content of his recent films like Hacksaw Ridge and Brawl in Cell Block 99. So the film is all the more enjoyable to see him perform in the comedy environment in which he began his career.
For the actor, the film must have had its rewards. How many actors play opposite sides of a storyline at the same time?
As for Marsden, the X-Men actor has always kept in touch with his lighter side, and he manages to pull off the greatest trick of all: orchestrating the proceedings with a genuine heart.
Grabinski is American, but given that his most recent project was co-showrunner of the Toronto-based Netflix anime series Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, his sense of humor is noticeably maple-flavored.
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