It's hard to say exactly what I expected from this movie going into it.
It has the appearance of a turkey in the way it's executed but none the less I personally was relatively entertained and I have nothing to do with the production team. I could see how some people watching this could, if it caught them on the wrong day, hate this movie.
It's a pretty unusual plot to start with, although I think the plot outline is somewhat misleading on the sensational "sidesteps the issue of age by freezing himself till its not an issue" thing. Yes that does happen but this movie is really about an inventor who is mildly a 'dweeb' who is in a relationship that is imbalanced against him and has a lab partner who is unreliable and a bad luck magnet. He invents successful cryogenics but because of everything else in his life the invention comes only in time to spare him the pain of his present existence, so he freezes himself on the off chance that he can rely on his unreliable side kick and that in the future things will go how he wants them to, but of course that's not the case.
The laughs are understated, that's for sure, but I found the events not obvious and better for that. it doesn't go well for him, and if anything it's a little too realistic on the actual problems our protagonists plans might hit. Hollywood would gloss over these in order to give us a whiz bang story of sci fi adventure, where as this movie investigates all the bits Hollywood would ignore, and I found it interesting for that.
Yes it is budget cinema, that's plainly obvious from the get go, and the delivery has a light comedy feel where perhaps it would have been better with something a little darker.
The sets are rough and although the acting is not crap no actor manages to pull off a stunner, they all have good moments, but then they all have some bad ones too. Nothing a multimillion dollar budget couldn't fix I'm sure.
a lot hinges on Robert Harriell's performance and that's perhaps where this movie trips in that he's not a particularly likable or dis-likable character. Maybe that's the delicate middle ground they wanted to take with this movie, but it would have appealed to more people if they'd made more of a decision on dark or light.
Special mention to Michael Consiglio for his shifty unreliable side kick part. There were some funny throw away lines delivered well from him, he was charmingly a jerk and funny for it.
In summary I didn't hate this movie. It's definitely not an indie award winner but it's not without merit either only if you manage to be in the right mood to overlook the productions flaws. Given that it's the first movie for the director and writer the next one could well be better as they all learn the craft.
I give it 6.5 for an interesting concept and addressing non obvious plot points.
