Summary
- Niche film tackles grandfather paradox with humor and heartwarming kick, expertly performed by veteran sci-fi comedy cast.
- Low-budget sci-fi with elaborate explanation avoids plot holes, offers flair and witty humor in an entertaining and unique style.
- Unique take on self-destruction delves into human condition, exploring personal growth and love within a mad scientist’s time-travel quest.
Time travel is a premise in film that is notorious for confusing paradoxes and plot holes. It’s an issue so common that many sci-fi fans simply accept it as inevitable, and most time-travel films don’t even try to address it. Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox is an exception to this. Written and directed by Stimson Snead, this low-budget sci-fi film was a direct result of Snead’s frustration with time travel movies and how they side-step the plot holes they create all too often.
Science geeks and sci-fi genre fans will especially love this niche film, which excels at what it set out to do. The specific paradox that Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox (try saying that five times fast) addresses is the “Grandfather Paradox,” which asks: what if a time traveler went back in time and killed their grandfather? They would no longer exist, which means they would not be able to go back and kill their grandfather — thus, a paradox. Tim Travers is a reclusive mad scientist who, of course, makes a time machine. He goes back in time one minute and immediately kills his past self, kickstarting his own version of this paradox which Tim becomes determined to understand.
Small Budget, Big Ideas
Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox
4.5/5
Director Stimson Snead
Runtime 110 Minutes
Writers Stimson Snead
Pros
- Hilarious and thoughtful approach to realistic time travel
- A surprisingly heartwarming kick
- Great performances from an expert sci-fi comedy cast
Cons
- Occasionally gets bogged down in scientific logistics
Produced by North By Northwest, Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox is low-budget sci-fi in all its glory. It’s surprisingly funny, decidedly irreverent, and even a bit gory. The film is based on a short made by Snead as a passion project, while he was waiting on another movie which fell through. Left with money, time, and an award-winning short in his hands, Snead decided to turn his script into a feature-length movie. Only 90 days later, shooting was wrapped. The overarching theme is best described by Snead in an interview with Washington Filmworks:
“This whole film is a comedy about self-destruction in which a guy is trying to find an explanation for something which has no explanation.”
The movie relies heavily on Samuel Dunning, who plays Tim Travers — all 21 (or more) versions of him. Dunning portrays each one with passion and nuance that shows off his incredible acting skills. In many ways, this is an elaborate and well-executed one-man show reminiscent of Multiplicity, but with a time machine instead of cloning. With that said, the film also boasts an impressive supporting cast of veterans in both sci-fi and comedy: Felicia Day, Joel McHale, Keith David, and Danny Trejo.
A Sci-Fi Film That Addresses the Continuity Time Travel Paradox
While there are some time-travel films that actually make sense, even the best of them (Primer, Timecrimes) stumble over some plot holes. Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox does its best to avoid plot holes with an elaborate explanation involving continuity that is maintained by the observer, and therefore remains unbroken. While there might be one or two small questions left by the end, the film mostly pulls off its internal logic (as far as a non-physicist can tell). Most importantly, it does so with flair and witty humor.
Right away, the opening credits and music set the scene for a highly unique and stylized sci-fi film. As is only proper with sci-fi, the first scene shows us the time machine as Tim powers it up for the first time. The film then cuts between Tim’s work on the machine and an interview he did with James Bunratty (Joel McHale), a conspiracy-minded radio host who is a parody of Alex Jones. He also meets Delilah, Bunratty’s radio producer who is snarky, cynical, and played by Felicia Day in what may be the funniest and best role of her career so far.
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Much like a mad scientist himself, director Stimson Snead was driven by his desire to see a time-travel movie that took its paradoxes to their most extreme — and hilarious — conclusion. Along with writing and producing the film, Snead co-stars as the frustrated assassin Helter, who questions his sanity after killing identical copies of Tim Travers multiple times.
North by Northwest Productions
Travers is hunted by this assassin because, in a humorous ode to Back to the Future, he stole plutonium from terrorists to power his machine. This is just a minor inconvenience to Travers, who cares only about understanding the paradox he created. He realizes that the speed of causality, which moves at the speed of light, cannot catch up to him where he currently is — one minute ahead of it (from his perspective).
Therefore, he must somehow adjust his time machine to create a door that will show him what the paradox looks like. Some of this gets a bit bogged down in jargon, (science nerds will be elated by Tim’s theories and brainstorming), and most of it may go over the heads of audiences, but the attempt alone is impressive. Snead clearly cared about the “how” of time travel and set out to make a sci-fi movie that is (probably) scientifically accurate and finally satisfies questions about time travel that are usually glossed over.
A Hilarious and Weird Take on What It Means to Love Yourself
Snead introduces the story as a film that specifically does not use time travel as a way to explore the human condition… but he may be trying to fly under the radar here. After all, as interesting as a realistic time-travel story may be, it wouldn’t be quite as memorable if Tim Travers wasn’t also compelling, with a satisfying character arc that develops along with the plot.
Tim Travers is anti-social, to say the least. He thinks he doesn’t need people, and his self-proclaimed mission statement in life is “to stand alone with God at the end of time, and tell the bastard off.” Some part of Tim is clearly at war with his mad-scientist side though, because he gets the time machine working… and then goes on a date with Delilah.
Related The Best Time Travel Movies of the 2000s, Ranked Some of these movies are among the greatest of the 2000s, and they’re all essential projects that revolve around time travel.
As Tim gathers 20 other versions of himself to try and adjust the time machine and witness the paradox, they each begin to change and grow apart. As the movie says, “A few hours can change a person.” The version of Tim that follows up with Delilah later becomes more emotional and hopeful, even as his most aggressive version becomes more unhinged and cold.
Amid the side-splitting humor and in-depth science, the humanism of the plot sneaks up on viewers. Even at first, the idea of “loving oneself” is more literal — and weird and hilarious — than meaningful. But that doesn’t stop the movie’s hidden message from shining through: not only is it possible to learn to love yourself, it is also possible to love and forgive the deepest, darkest versions of you. Similar to how Everything, Everywhere, All At Once approached nihilism in the face of the multiverse and emerged as a story about family, love, and the meaning of life, Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox evolves into a story about loneliness, loving oneself, and hope — despite Stimson Snead’s insistence that it is just about the time travel.
Audiences at the Cinequest Film Festival will be able to see Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox on Saturday, March 9 at 7:00 p.m. at the Hammer Theatre Center in San Jose, and Wednesday, March 13 at 2:20 p.m. at the same theater. You can find tickets and more information here.
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