Project Almanac

By: John Delia

Tweens, teens and early-twenties viewers should like Project Almanac, a fast paced sci-fi thriller with respectable acting and creative direction.  The target audience will especially like the hand held cinematography reminiscent of Project X that continues throughout giving the film a rocky roller coaster feel. It’s a fun film with a little romance to boot.

David Raskin (Jonny Weston) shows great promise for getting into Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as he’s a wiz at inventing mechanical things. Besides, he wants to follow in his inventor father’s footsteps.  In fact, he has developed the first radio controlled helicopter that steers with specially made strips taped to his hands.  Being a senior in high school, it’s his entry for a chance at a much needed scholarship to MIT.  His friends, Quinn Goldberg (Sam Lerner) and Adam Li (Allen Evangelista) are helping David to reach his goal and his sister Christina (Virginia Gardner) has been filming it all to submit as proof of his creation.

Unfortunately for David, although he gets accepted into the prestigious school, they awarded the scholarship to someone else. Upset, David starts to look for ways to get the money to go to the expensive school. His mother (Amy Landecker) has put the house up for sale, but that only makes David sadder.  Determined to try and convince MIT that he has the ability, he goes down to his father’s invention workshop to check out if anything there will work.  He stumbles over a box and plans for a time machine called Project Almanac, and things start looking up. But David, be careful what you wish for, you just may get it the hard way.

The film presses on with some very funny situations, most of which are either pay backs to bullies, getting an “A” and even winning the lottery. This is director Dean Israelite’s first full length feature and sadly it shows in several scenes that are choppy and insignificant.  He uses the home video cam for excuses when special effects are not very good and the film is riddled with costume continuity errors. The project was originally slated to open following filming in 2013, but is just now getting a release date. That said, his ability to pull good acting from his mostly newcomer actors does show he has potential.

The teen roles are aptly filled with actors that should attract a good box-office for the first weekend.  I like Jonny Weston in the lead role as David, he has a good look about him and certainly acts brilliantly enough to make his character believable.  As for the others, I would like to point out Sofia Black-D’Elia as Jessie. She’s a very good support character joining in on the adventure when her car batteries are needed to make the time machine work. While she’s not the teen in wild and wacky MTV’s “Skins,” her character here does provide the necessary teen romance. She’s the center of David’s dangerous quest for a more realistic relationship.

Project Almanac has been rated PG-13 for some language and sexual content. For mom’s only SPOILER ALERT: If your preteen has been watching MTV they probably have heard most of the language and the scene of sexuality has no nudity or actual sex.

FINAL ANALYSIS: The target teen audience should like this film a lot. (B)