Milkduds

Primer (7/10)

May 21st, 2005

Yes, it has been a while since I’ve written a review - almost a month! But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been watching movies. I have 4 DVD reviews and 1 theatre review to post on, so here’s the first.

In my opinion, there really is a shortage of good time travel movies that attempt to make sense out of the technology used. Primer, starring no one in particular, attempts to fill this void, but the science might go a little over the viewer’s head. The movie is about a couple of entrepreneur engineers that “accidentally” build a time machine in their garage while working on something else to make money on. Once they figure out how to use it, the results are unpredictable and suspenseful due to the greedy nature of humans.

The first 15 or 20 minutes of the movie are pretty flat and the scientific language may bore the audience. The story starts off with 4 friends that are arguing about what device they should try to make next, and since they take turns, one of them decides to try and build a super refrigerator. While two of the friends, Abe and Aaron, are testing the unit, they get some weird results. One of them sends the results to a lab and when he gets them back, he discovers they’ve made a time machine. Once you see them start to figure it out, you are hooked for the rest of the movie and are waiting to see what happens next.

If you are a nerd or geek, you’ll really like this movie because you’ll feel like it was made for people like you. If you aren’t, you’ll still enjoy it because of the suspense, but the science is likely to make your head hurt if you think about the paradoxes of time travel, which this movie also deals with. The acting is ok, but not great, and the script could have probably been written better. However, the story is very unique, and for the $7K budget this was made with, I think this movie deserves some credit.

Entry Filed under: Movies