Mark enjoys answering the FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL!
Just imagine if three of your best mates managed to get hold of a couple of million quid and went off and made a time travelling sci-fi comedy, set in a pub. Well, thats pretty much how I felt watching FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT TIME TRAVEL. But far from being a negative viewpoint, it was precisely why I ended up enjoying it. Its not a perfect film by any means, but as a first time stab at big screen directing by Gareth Carrivick, and writing by Jamie Mathieson, its no insult to their or anyone elses cinematic CV. 
Its the tale of 3 ordinary blokes in small-time jobs, a wannabe writer named Toby (Marc Wooton) , Ray the sci-fi geek (Chris ODowd), and their natural cynic mate Pete (Dean Lennox Kelly), who one night in their local pub unwittingly stumble on a time leak in the gents (yep you read that right) and spend the next time-jumping years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes trying to figure out what on earth is going on. Theyre helped along the way by Cassie (Anna Faris), a woman who claims to be from the future, and Ray the Greats number one fan. It starts with an epic space vista that cheekily belies its very earthbound structure, and moves swiftly onto the classic intro of the lovable losers. All very low budget brit sci-fi (nodding in the direction of the godfather Douglas Adams), and you cant help but initially whince a little at the obvious flaws of underfunded brit coms; the production value, cinematography, vaguely sit-com performances but this isnt cynical whincing, its more of a ok, come on lads, crank it up a bit now, I know itll get better. Thankfully it does, though thats not to say they dont set themselves up for a potential fall; I mean its dangerous ground when a films characters have lines like Story is king, and they sit compiling a list of tips for Hollywood. But by then, theyve already reached that mantle of your mates in a pub talking rubbish so it all makes perfect sense. Which is where Faris comes in, and things head onto a higher plane via Hollywood star power and the start of the trios time-leaking conundrums. The stage-bound worries dissipate, the laughs come flying in with the confusion (including where this magical pub is because they seem to still allow smoking). Had they suddenly broken free of the bar environs Id have frankly been disappointed; even nuclear devastation and homages to classic sci-fi creature features cant move them from this pub. The inherent tension of undirected time-travel works well; its funny, pretty smart, and chucklesome. And the lack of any big budget sci-fi elements makes it all the more charming. Its very easy to use time travel as a lazy story construct, hard to do well, easy to screw up; like time travel itself. But they manage to get away with it. There are some nifty little set-ups and payoffs, but my one dark cloud is perhaps a note paper resolution that isnt clever enough and somewhat lets down the preceding fun. By the end though I genuinely wanted the whole thing to succeed, my three fake pub mates hadnt wasted my time. But I did have a couple of questions on my mind, why didnt anyone give these guys more money, and where was my call to come and join in? The final word though Ill leave to the rules of time travel; Dont kill anything, dont f**k anything.. Even if you never stumble across a time leak in your local boozer you can still use at least half of that in your everyday lives.