Here’s one that came right out of nowhere. Seriously, I can find precious little information about where this movie came from or how it got made. Not even in the DVD’s special features — because there aren’t any.
What I do know is that Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox comes to us from Stimson Snead (sweet mercy, even that name sounds made-up), the writer/director/producer who also plays a supporting role. Who is Snead? No idea. He was a co-executive producer on MST3K (the Netflix era), and he’s made a few short films and music videos on the side, but that’s all I know. This appears to be his feature debut.
Half the cast is played by Samuel Dunning (more on that later), also making his feature debut here. And the lead actor is pretty much the last one mentioned in the credits. Joel McHale, Danny Trejo, Keith David, and exec producer Felicia Day all get significantly smaller roles, and I can only assume they got higher billing placement in lieu of pay.
All signs point to a scrappy microbudget film, and I can already tell you that every last dime is up there on the screen. Literally the only two salient points I can find about the making of this film are that it was locally produced in Spokane, and it was shot in 16 days. A little over two weeks. That might be the most insane thing about this movie, which is saying a lot.
Dunning plays Tim Travers, a mad scientist who really is a legit genius, but he got kicked out of school before he could formally get his doctorate. And after a lifetime of hard work and research, Tim built an actual functioning time machine. Problem: It only works for traveling one minute backwards in time. Which actually isn’t a problem at all.
You see, Tim isn’t interested in visiting the past or the future. His only interest is in going back to kill his younger self. Tim is trying to deliberately cause a time travel paradox that would break the laws of causality and thereby destroy the universe.
Why? Quite a few reasons, in fact.
For one thing, Tim is a scientist. So if he can figure out how time paradoxes work, what happens in the event of a paradox, and whether a paradox is even possible, that knowledge is an end in itself. (Hell, the mere fact that he’s built a functioning prototype time machine is already enough to make him arguably the most accomplished scientist in history.) More importantly, Tim is a deeply cynical misanthrope who’s perpetually disappointed with people and with the universe in general. So if he could break the universe — perchance to build a new one — why wouldn’t he? Also, if there is a God and this means Tim could spit in his eye, so much the better.
Anyway, Tim proceeds to kill his younger self only to find that nothing happens. In fact, Tim repeats the experiment (i.e. shooting his own unwitting duplicate self in the head) about three dozen times. Apart from the bloody knee-high pile of his own younger corpses, there’s no effect at all. So Tim goes to ponder over a drink, one thing leads to another, and we’ve suddenly got several dozen iterations of Tim running around the lab in various states of inebriation. Thus all these different iterations of Tim put their collective heads together to try and cause a time paradox. Hilarity ensues.
(Side note: You might be wondering about the conservation of mass. If there are all these duplicates of Tim popping up, and if matter can neither be created nor destroyed, where is their biological mass coming from? The film asks that question, and the answer is so laughably twisted on so many levels I can’t possibly recount it here.)
While all that’s going on, we’ve got running subplots with the special guest stars. Most notably, of course Tim built his time machine with plutonium that he stole from terrorists. (Funny how that keeps happening…) The terrorists are pissed off with Tim, so they send in Helter (there’s Snead again), a hapless hitman getting increasingly frustrated because Tim won’t seem to stay dead no matter how many times Helter shoots his head off.
Then there’s Felicia Day in the role of Delilah, our love interest. Put simply, Day is here to play another iteration of her established brand. Even so, Day brings an outgoing charm that contrasts nicely against the social incompetence of Dunning’s Tim. I might add that while both of these characters are deeply cynical, Delilah is significantly less arrogant and nihilistic, with a delectably dark sense of humor. The two of them play adorably well off each other, especially when Delilah is faced with irrefutable evidence that Tim’s experiments are very real.
Too bad Delilah is only in half the movie. Seriously, she peaces out at the halfway point and she’s barely present afterwards.
Joel McHale gets a few minutes as a radio shock jock dipshit slinging vitamin supplements to go with his conspiracy theories. Danny Trejo shows up in the third act as a far more imposing hitman who’s nicer and more thoughtful than you might expect. Keith David doesn’t show up until the climax, and no way in hell am I talking about his role here.
This is Dunning’s show, 100 percent. He spends pretty much the entire movie acting opposite himself, and the doubling (and tripling, and quadrupling…) effect is seamless. It’s truly astounding how perfectly well the filmmakers sell the illusion of multiple Tims talking and touching and interacting with each other and taking up several spaces all at once.
Given the basic underlying premise of so many disposable Tims running around and getting shot to pieces, it should be obvious that slapstick and gallows humor are the order of the day. Which is hilarious, given 1) the fact that we have so many disposable copies of this character running around, 2) the highly unsympathetic nature of the lead character, and 3) the many and various ways that the Tims get killed off for our amusement.
Even so, what might be even funnier are the romances that crop up. Yes, seriously. There are Tims that fall in love with each other. There are Tims that make out with each other. There’s an orgy that’s outrageously funny to a degree I couldn’t possibly describe here.
Incidentally, while this film definitely feels like a queer romance, I’m not sure it qualifies as a romance between two iterations of the same character. Do we have a firm answer on that from a more reputable judge? You decide.
The romantic element touches on a lot of the film’s themes. Yes, the film naturally deals with huge existential themes like the nature of time, humankind’s lonely place in the universe, the meaning of life and so on and so forth. And the sheer cosmic scale of this story means we get some off-the-wall bugfuck sequences that come within an inch of meta commentary. More importantly, all of the grander concepts are directly tied back to the nature of Tim and everything he’s doing.
It’s quite notable that there is no one “hero” Tim. There’s no “original” Tim that we consistently follow from Point A to Point B. As more Tims get created and destroyed, the entire collective takes on protagonist status. All the Tims are the main character — they are all different facets of the same mind and personality trying to work through this crazy day.
At one point, the Tims notice that they’re developing different personalities and becoming different people even though they’re all working with the same body and they all came from the same starting point. Personally, I like to think of it as a symbol of how people contain multitudes and any rational human being is multifaceted by nature. The movie, on the other hand, makes the repeated statement that people can change dramatically in even the shortest period of time. Especially under extreme circumstances.
Literally, metaphorically, and in every other possible way, this is a story about a deeply broken person learning to love himself. At its heart and core, this movie makes the statement that if even the ugliest and most awful person alive can find something about himself that’s beautiful, then there’s something in everyone and even in the universe itself that’s worthy of love and redemption. It’s a very James Gunn-esque statement. I love it.
Tim Travers & the Time Travelers Paradox is a trip. The effects are damn near flawless and the script is phenomenal. Every single actor came to play and Samuel Dunning had damn well better be the next great character actor. Most importantly, every single aspect of this movie — the epic scope, the technobabble, the intimate stakes, the unthinkably gonzo plot turns, and the themes that range from cosmic to personal in scale — are all presented with a wicked sense of humor. Turns out it’s surprisingly easy to keep everything straight and roll with all the craziness when the audience is laughing hard enough.
As one of the rare lucky few who know and love Detention — and considering that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Anna and the Apocalypse are my two all-time favorite movies — this one hit me right where I live. If you’ve got an appetite for scrappy one-of-a-kind microbudget indie films like Hollywood could never create (and I sure as hell hope you do), you owe it to yourself to seek this one out.