2435. The Man From The Future (2011)

Starring: Wagner Moura, Alinne Moraes, Fernando Ceylão

Director: Cláudio Torres

Running Time: 106 mins

The Man From The Future (O homem do futuro) is a Brazilian film about a brilliant but bitter scientist who invents a time machine, and travels back to the day 20 years ago that changed his entire life, in the hope of making things right.

This is such a wonderful movie. Funny, energetic, inventive and exciting throughout, it manages to do time travel, comedy and romance right in the way that so many films do wrong, and while it’s all a bit of a rollercoaster, it’s a film with such beautiful heart that you just won’t be able to resist having great fun with The Man From The Future.

First things first, it is that heartfelt, likable vibe that really helps this film stand out from the crowd. Any number of big Hollywood movies have employed the ‘travel back in time to get the girl’ plot (About Time, When We First Met etc.), but few are able to make that premise work quite as well as The Man From The Future, which sits back and has a whole lot of fun with all the mess of time travel, all the while crafting a genuinely tender and thoroughly heartwarming romance at the centre of the story, which was easily the biggest surprise of the movie for me.

But what’s more is that those two genres aren’t kept as separate themes, but instead tie together to make a brilliantly-executed story that’s as delightful as it is genuinely thrilling, as we follow a frustrated scientist from present day who travels back to the 90s to get his dream girl, and the dream life to come with it.

Of course, things aren’t ever as simple as that, and the film proves an immensely entertaining watch with twists and surprises galore throughout, taking on a fairly complex time travel story and making it work like clockwork, and proving far more exciting and inventive with the premise than the majority of serious time travel movies, even getting to the crux of the dangers and problems with time travel, all the while keeping with its energetic and fun-loving vibes right to the finish.

The central romance is an absolute delight to follow, and while it plays in well to the main character’s arc, it’s the epitome of the film’s wonderful heart and joyous attitude, which itself extend to every moment of the movie, making for a thoroughly enjoyable watch from beginning to end.

With a memorable and massively entertaining soundtrack, a good helping of 90s nostalgia, rapid pacing, and properly funny comedy to boot, The Man From The Future is a film that just keeps exceeding your expectations at every moment, finishing on an exhilarating note that makes the film one of the most energising I’ve seen in a long while.

When it comes to the cast, things may not seem quite as polished at first, but the performances follow the trend of the whole movie in continuing to improve and entertain as things go on, and with every new twist and revelation that changes your perspective about the characters, the performances become all the more enjoyable.

Overall, I loved The Man From The Future. A hugely energetic, funny and inventive movie, the film brings sci-fi and romantic comedy together in swifter and more exciting fashion than almost any film I’ve seen, complete with a brilliant soundtrack, strong performances, rapid pacing and energising direction, and a clever and consistently surprising screenplay, all of which makes for a massively entertaining right the way through, and that’s why I’m giving it an 8.0.