MEGA TIME SQUAD / CERT: 18 / DIRECTOR & SCREENPLAY: TIM VAN DAMMEN / STARRING: ANTON TENNET, MORGAN ALBRECHY, YOSON AN, JAYA BEACH-ROBERTSON, JONNY BRUGH / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Writer/director Tim van Dammen’s quirky time-hop japer finally receives a UK Blu-ray release from Arrow Video. With Taika Waititi-like quirks and early Pete Jackson-style freneticism, van Dammen’s zero-budget ditty is a brattish, scatty cult in the making that tickles pits and innovatively twists time travel titbits into harried anarchic hokum. Sadly though, Mega Time Squad fails to soar story-wise or astound with visual artistry due to clunky plotting, scatty characters, and slapdash execution; but it’s mostly amusing and comical.
The plot follows Johnny (Anton Tennet), a local plonker living in a garage in Thames, New Zealand, who links with a local crime syndicate, led by persistently miffed meathead Shelton (Brugh). When a Triad gang encroach on his turf – using an antique store for gambling cash drop offs – Shelton tasks Johnny to sabotage their operation and steal the cash. Mid-job, Johnny nicks an antique bracelet attached to a temporal dislocating, time travelling juju. After botching the cash snatch, Johnny then uses the bracelet to travel back and fix his blunders, but only makes matters much worse in the process.
Mega Time Squad is affable, nugget crusted cine-guff/sci-fi fodder that, despite its charms, resounds as just endearing and witty due to its hasty, half-arsed air. The best humour derive from its ham-fisted characters, performances and dialogue delivery more than via the writing, but not all of the gags land. Van Dammen draws decent performances from the cast (Brugh is hilarious) and inculcates a fitting vigour via scattershot camerawork, but the narrative disentangles like the script was scribbled on the back of a scrunched betting slip in a pub the night before, then trimmed and ironed slovenly while hungover the next day.
A love story subplot bobs in the backdrop when Shelton’s sister/ explosives expert Kelly (Hetty Gaskell-Hahn) falls for Johnny. The couple plan to take the money and scram but scratch that after their sabotage bombs and subsequent time travel calamities surface as a result of their attempts to rectify it. Instead of befuddling continuum hooey, van Dammen incorporates an ingenious twist linked to the timeframe limits in which Johnny can return. These could have made for a more engrossing plot if properly plaited in a complex Memento-style pattern with brain bending/mind blowing paradoxes.
The characters curse with a brutish eloquence but crude comedy doesn’t always blend within the context, nor does the extreme (yet comic) violence, the kind of which worked better in New Zealand’s 2015 black metal horror comedy Deathgasm (in which MTS director van Dammen appeared as a ‘street demon’). A suited, sustained ‘80s/skater style is suffused through the fashion, marketing (some posters play on Back To The Future’s) and a thudding, part-rock synth score that rings well within the rugged punk, shaky cut-rate aesthetics.
The film features decent digital effects for its budget, including great jets of bloodletting and head detonations, but the violence is as juvenile as the humour. When combined with innovative subgenre traits, Mega Time Squad makes for an intriguing yet jarring concoction of playful comedy and delinquent sci-fi that unravels clunkily but ultimately resounds as brash, recalcitrant fun.
The limited (by Arrow standards) Blu-ray extras include a director’s commentary, short and sweet FrightFest interview between van Dammen and Paul McEvoy, image galleries, trailers, and an illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing on the film by journalist Anton Bitel.
