The story in writer/director Alex Goff’s short film revolves around an unnamed slacker (Evan Granberry) waking up and rolling a joint only to see it has disappeared moments later. That’ll happen. However, Goff takes this pedestrian event and theorizes what other forces might be in play behind such a mystery. Besides, you know, being high and having the recall of a goldfish.
What we see in this convoluted comedy is that multiple versions of the protagonist are using a time machine to steal and return the missing joint in a series of events that nestle like Russian Dolls. It’s pretty clever, even if it eventually doesn’t make any more sense or any less paradoxes than other time travel jaunts.
“…an unnamed slacker waking up and rolling a joint, only to see it has disappeared moments later…”
This is essentially Tenet with bongs, made one year before Tenet came out. How did Goff do this? Does he possess terrifying marijuana-soaked insights across time? In much the same way that Villeneuve’s template for four-dimensional thinking in Arrival put blockbuster science fiction’s function to sketching the pathways to space mankind needs to imagine to survive, does this film’s similarly daring experimentation with time travel provide the nudge we need to launch ourselves at the stars at last? Is this film the key to galactic expansion for humanity?
Or is it a load of old bollocks about a bloke skinning up and losing his spliff? This is the sort of film that anyone can toss off in an evening or two. It kind of validates and extends the old saw that did the rounds a few years back about breaking into comics. “Step 1: draw a comic. step 2: congratulations, you’ve broken into comics.” That seems to go just as well here. We now live in a world where there is a camera fused to every hand. The democratisation of video entertainment means anyone with a brilliant idea can make it reverberate forever, immortal, with an adoring fanbase. Again, I doubt this is that. It really is literally a load of bollocks about someone skinning up and losing their J. It is, in fact, exactly the sort of film one makes for fun when one has skinned up and lost one’s J. For all of that, it’s pretty amusing and charming. The film is silly and cheap but fun, because the split screen special effects used to make one protagonist into many are first rate.
Next time, though, the time machine should probably be a bit less recognizable than a microwave oven with a sheet of A4 taped to it that says TIME MACHINE. Actually, scratch that. Keep it.
"…essentially Tenet with bongs..."
