Director: Gareth Carrivick

Cast: Chris O’Dowd, Marc Wootton, Dean Lennox Kelly

Synopsis: While drinking at their local pub, three social outcasts attempt to navigate a time-travel conundrum.

As far as I recall, this movie was absolutely slaughtered by the critics — or at least that bloke who writes reviews for the Mail on Sunday: although God only knows why he bothers, because he doesn’t seem to like films of any description — but I’m a sucker for time travel stories so I rented this cheap British comedy against my better judgment. I was pleasantly surprised, then, to find that, while it’s far from being the funniest (or cleverest) film I’ve ever seen, it’s good enough to keep most people entertained for its relatively short running time.

The film focuses on three friends — two of whom are sci-fi nerds (or imagineers, as they prefer to be called) — who accidentally stumble across a time leak in the gents toilet of their local pub. Leak and loo — geddit? That’s a good indication of the level of humour on offer here — not exactly dazzling but funny enough in a stupid kind of way to keep you watching. It reminded me of an episode of Red Dwarf, but one that happens to a typical bunch of blokes down the pub.

The boys wander back and forth in and out of the loo in an attempt to return to their own time, but each visit just complicates things even further. There’s quite a few neat ideas buried beneath the humour, and the characters, while not immediately the type you might take to, definitely grow on you as the story unfolds. There’s a mass of references to such diverse sources as Kiss Me Deadly and Flash Gordon, so if you do find the humour starting to sag there is always something happening to keep you interested. And keep watching until the very end because the film doesn’t finish when the credits start to roll…