James vs His Future Self: Time-travel themed Canadian rom-com plays out the clock nicely enough

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-minus

When they aren’t about lethal cyborgs, time travel movies tend to be about regret. Whether you get there via hot tub or a hit on the head, fixing the past is a catnip premise in movies like, say, Peggy Sue Got Married.

But like nearly all time-travel movies, the inherently good-hearted Canadian sci-fi romance James vs His Future Self has an inherent flaw. If someone from the future fixes the thing that messed up that future, that person will no longer have had any need to go back and fix things in the first place. So, with no intervention, that bad thing will happen after all, forcing future-man to come back and fix it. Rinse, repeat, infinity.

James (Jonas Chernick) and Jimmy (Daniel Stern) are the same guy from different times.

Really, the only way to save your sanity as a writer is to ignore the implications of time travel. And with James vs His Future Self, Jeremy LaLonde (The Go-Getters) does indeed gloss over the details on route to delivering what is essentially a rom-com with occasional existential thoughts.

This is yet another film that was scheduled to be in a theatre near you right now (Canadian films are typically released in the window between awards season and summer blockbusters).  James vs His Future Self is a less abrasive and transgressive film than LaLonde’s previous The Go-Getters (an anti-romance about two street people conniving their way out of town). Consequently, it’s not as raucously funny. But it’s a decent enough time waster.

James (Jonas Chernick, who is also the film’s co-writer), is a young physicist obsessed with time-travel – to the detriment of relationships with his sister Meredith (Tommie-Amber Pirie) and with his fellow physicist and should-be-girlfriend Courtney (Cleopatra Coleman). Both women are attentive to the point of exasperation, they make sure he feeds himself and otherwise acts like a functioning adult. (Meredith, moreover, is determined to get James to stop obsessing over their parents’ accidental death years earlier, which, ironically, is the motivation for his desire to time-travel in the first place).

As he’s preparing to present his theories to a respected and eccentric professor (an under-used Frances Conroy), James finds himself kidnapped by Jimmy (Daniel Stern) a taser-toting apparent lunatic with a story to match. Obsessed and agitated, it’s hard to reconcile that Jimmy is, in fact, James. But, in one of the few moments where we’re reminded of LaLonde’s affinity for rude ‘n’ crude, Jimmy convinces James of his identity via certain identifying characteristics also used in the Bill Clinton impeachment trial.

James is thrilled to discover he’d eventually succeed in creating time travel. But Jimmy is there with a message to drop the project - not for the usual reason, to save the world, but to straighten out James’ love life lest his obsession leave him old and alone.

In the big picture, this seems like a trivial and even narcissistic thing to which to apply such an astonishing discovery (Kill Hitler instead maybe? Stop 9/11? Save JFK?). But Jimmy is obsessed, and may even be willing to commit murder to prevent himself from ruining his life.

Stripped to its essentials, James vs His Future Self is practically a template rom-com – a cute couple that should be together, a guy who can’t commit, and a bull-in-a-china-shop sidekick for comic relief. That last would be Stern, whose gleeful derangement is the best reason to watch this thing. (There’s even a nod to that old trope, the race-to-the-airport-to-stop-her-from-leaving).

But there is a nifty scene in the last act that suggests LaLonde and Chernick “get” the headiness of what they would be dealing with if they’d dug deeper. Without giving anything away, it’s a visual that suggests realities upon realities.

So little attention is otherwise paid to any of this, that scene kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. It’s yet another piece of James vs His Future Self that fails to fall into place, despite all good intentions.

James vs His Future Self. Directed by Jeremy LaLonde. Written by Jeremy LaLonde and Jonas Chernick. Stars Jonas Chernick, Daniel Stern and Cleopatra Coleman. Launches Friday, April 3 on Bell, Shaw and iTunes.