Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox (2024)

Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox Review

Plot Summary

To resolve the time traveler’s paradox, Tim Travers asks how can one kill himself in the past? Would it hypothetically blow up the universe? Tim Travers, a self-loathing genius, is going to try! He’ll also make an international crime syndicate led by Royce (Danny Trejo) very angry with him, enter into a contest of wills with conspiracy theorist radio host James Bunratty (Joel McHale), and maybe squeeze in a date with the dangerously unstable Delilah (Felicia Day). Tim will have to learn to literally live with his own worst elements before they destroy him along with everything else.

Review

Like the protagonist of “Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox,” writer-director Stimson Snead shares some qualities with mad scientists. He takes apart absurd mistakes, plot holes or just simply strange parts of various time travel-focused films and throws them all into a blender for his movie. The result is a delicious cocktail of funny-sounding science fiction that never clashes. If “Back To The Future” were made into an R-rated B-movie, you’d get something like this. Excuse my shorthand but we don’t need to type that title out every time: This is a raucous ride through Snead’s satirical vision. We follow our above-mentioned hero as an audience surrogate through the convoluted mechanics of time travel laid bare by Travers’ quest to understand what he calls the “Time Traveler’s Paradox,” more commonly known as the “Grandfather Paradox.”

You build a time machine first, then you go back in time and kill your grandfather or younger self, if you’re Tim Travers. So do you continue to exist as yourself from further into future now without your former past self, or do you just cease to be? Well…future-Travers remains after past-Travers is killed one minute ago, and that’s when his brain kicks off. He can’t stand living a paradox he doesn’t understand. What happens next turns into pure madness.

While some time travel movies get caught up in their physics or plot holes, Snead’s movie dances a line between insane and plausibly insane. We’re not supposed to track every iteration of Travers and trust me, there are many as he brings earlier versions of himself in to help understand it but rather the viewers serve as the judge of what is now and what is past/future. Establishing an easily followable story was Snead’s first great achievement here; in a movie that gets very strange very fast, the amount of sharp humor he packed into it is equally laudable. Full of great one-liners, setups and outrageous gags, “Tim Travers” will at least keep you laughing until the credits roll, if not more.

Storywise, there’s a dip in the second half where its territory expands beyond being a story of the human experience although it does explore Travers’ ego and lack of self-love (excluding the hilariously-timed self-pleasure with 14 different versions of himself), so points for that and morphs into a metaphysical meditation on reality. I liked all the nods to previous time travel movies or just generally absurd life-as-a-conspiracy theories like “the universe is a simulation” or “we’re all video game characters controlled by a self-published author played by Keith David at his most delightfully Keith David cynical,” but it definitely inflates the central story too much. I could have stayed in Travers’ lab with all those other Traverses talking shit and making dick jokes while like 30 different Traverses manned their own respective laboratories in the background making ridiculously elaborate scientific advancements just to say they did.

As far as sci-fi B-movies go, Tim Travers is one of them. It never really steps too far outside itself again, narrative gripes aside and does an excellent job showcasing Samuel Dunning’s wonderfully weird performance(s). Not to mention Danny Trejo as an enforcer sent by terrorist who Tim stole nuclear material from (read: Back to the Future homage) and Joel McHale as a podcast host who’s basically if Joe Rogan and Alex Jones had sex are great additions.

Tim Travers didn’t entirely work for me; it spirals out of control in like the last half hour or so…but there’s more good than bad here. Plus I laughed my ass off and Snead’s wonderfully weird humor is right up my alley/matches what I want from a low-budget sci-fi movie.

For most people, the worst case scenario for The Grandfather Paradox is ceasing to exist. But for Tim Travers, the worst possible outcome is not understanding what’s happening right now. Like, how can there be something that this mad genius doesn’t know!? Well lucky for us the worst case outcome in this situation makes for a fun movie so I guess that’s our best case or should I say our West Case Scenario!

This Burke-Gilman Brewing Company West Coast IPA is brewed with Eureka, Chinook and Citra hops which gives it a lovely floral, citrus and tropical aroma. Not to mention it tastes delicious with pine, berries and a squeeze of lime to accentuate the dank hoppiness throughout. Overall it’s a worthy companion for kicking back on your porch while contemplating time travel theories over cigarettes like you’re in 1995.

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