Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox

He has a bit of a Looper complex. Instead of wanting to kill Hitler or attend a Coltrane concert, Tim Travers uses time travel to kill himself, so he can explore the resulting paradox. It is an ambitious but very bad idea that inevitably goes spectacularly awry in director-screenwriter Stimson Snead’s Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox, which opens this Friday in theaters.

The titular paradox boils down to the notion that if you kill yourself in the past, your time-traveling self would still be alive thereby creating a paradox. It is a thought experiment that Travers takes to ridiculous lengths. Ill-advisedly, he also discusses his research with James Bunratty, an “alternate science” talk radio host. This will be a mistake, because it creates a trail for the hitman hired by the terrorists, whose plutonium Travers stole to power his time portal.

Fortunately, by the time Helter the assassin starts tracking Travers, he has already created at least a dozen other selves through time travel. He started by murdering his previous others selves, but then he started letting his selves from other times (merely one minute apart, but often enough to make considerable differences) live, so he could consult with himself. It also means Helter must keep killing every Travers he sees. To make things extra complicated, several of the Travers take time out for his/their date with Bunratty’s resentful producer Delilah, but it always ends badly, because neither of them is really suitable relationship material, especially him (all of them).

The loopy Looper-esque chaos of the first half is wildly entertaining. However, Snead has trouble maintaining the manic energy during the second half. It is also clear how desperately he was searching for an exit strategy—judging from the nearly incomprehensible speed of the double-talk. Nevertheless, Snead earns credit for developing a fresh take on time travel and for mining the science fiction material for a good deal of laughs.

Samuel Dunning also deserves credit for playing so many discernably different and easily differentiated versions of the same character: Travers. He nicely shifts gears from sad clown to angry clown. Joel McHale is aptly cast as the loudmouth, Bunratty. Likewise, Keith David has the perfect Morgan Freeman-rivaling voice for his surprise third act character, but the writing for his jokes and dialogue is conspicuously forced. Of course, Danny Trejo finds himself on solid, familiar ground portraying the second hitman, Royce, but he still appears to be greatly enjoying himself, in the right kind of way.

Regardless, Snead’s film delivers a lot of fun, distinguished by a number of twisted twists. Some attempts at outrageous edginess are pointlessly off-putting, but Snead’s originality is worth sitting through the questionable sexual material. Recommended for time-travel sf fans, Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox opens this Friday (5/30) in theaters, including the Glendale Laemmle.