Writers: Chris Reading, Anna-Elizabeth Shakespeare and Hillary Shakespeare
Director: Chris Reading
Time Travel is Dangerous is deliciously inventive, unashamedly British mockumentary which spoofs every trope of time-travel/schlock horror films, buddy movies and all those heart-warming stories in which a disparate band of people find themselves united by a common cause. For good measure, writers Chris Reading, Anna-Elizabeth Shakespeare and Hillary Shakespeare throw in a wonderfully demented version of Tomorrow’s World – The Future Today, in which Johnny Vegas is forever stuck inside Botty, a new-fangled 1970s robot.
Framed as documentary, its spoof credentials are evident from the start, with Stephen Fry narrating the origins of the story. We’re in Muswell Hill where Ruth and Megan run a vintage shop, Cha Cha Cha. Real life actors, Ruth Syratt and Megan Stevenson, give performances to camera of pitch-perfect flatness – think Jennifer Saunders – as they are interviewed about their extraordinary experience. There, in the bric-a-brac crammed shop, is a time-machine. It’s very early Dr Who, a souped-up dodgem car with fairy lights and unconvincing-looking controls. Ruth and Megan explain how they turned around their failing shop by nipping back to the past to loot saleable objects. They’ve made a packet. “People like pewter,” Ruth opines, as she snatches up a couple of goblets from somewhere vaguely medieval. “You can’t put a price on nostalgia,” agrees Megan – “except you can.” “Toxic masculinity,” they agree when they turn up in some Wild West town, before swiping a ten-gallon hat off a freshly killed cowboy. “It’s got blood on it…. It can be dry cleaned.” The gags are fabulous and they keep coming.
Then there’s the insane scientific society, TESTIS, a group of nerdy inventors dominated by sinister Martin (a great turn by Guy Henry). One member demonstrates his Resizing Machine, another his Invisible Overgarment. One Rocket Boot jets off on its own before its inventor has struggled into its pair.
And there is so much more besides. Before Severance, who knew that so much fun could be had from obsolete technology? There’s a wonderful array of clunky old equipment. VCRS feature heavily. Meanwhile on The Future Today, host Ralph Sheldrake (Brian Bovell) explains science a split-second behind the beat (the ropey production values are all part of the joke), while ignoring the contributions of obviously talented female scientist, Valerie Lancaster (Sophie Thompson). There’s an appealing carelessness about how the science apparently works. Worm-holes in time more or less says it all.
Then comes a shock. Somehow Ruth breaks the time-space continuum, or somesuch, and is now a self-confident 16 year old, obsessed with creating Tik Tok content. She resents having to work in Cha Cha Cha, preferring to hang out with the youth of Muswell Hill. Disillusion is forthcoming, however, when she’s abruptly returned to her true age: the youth of Muswell Hill no longer take her calls.
Before you know it, Megan disappears, and this time it’s more serious. She’s fallen through a sink hole into The Unreason. Cue an epic journey for Ruth which is of course, also an epic journey of self-discovery. Plus there’s an ever-more absurd cast of otherworldly characters stuck forever in a sort of steam-punk underworld.
The characterisation is endlessly imaginative, from Martin’s earnest side-kick Alex (Tom Lenk), desperately keen to maintain the protocols of the Testis Society’s committee meeting (“shall I put that in the minutes?”) to Brenda (Pat O’Connor), an overhelpful local who keeps trying to flog Ruth and Megan tasteless stuff from yesteryear. Brian Blessed does a funny turn as Gavin the Octopus.
It’s a hoot from beginning to end.
Time Travel Is Dangerous is coming to UK cinemas from 28th March.
