Cinema One Originals 2017 | Throwback Today: second chances and the iMac that leapt through time

Life for Primo (Carlo Aquino) isn't peachy in the slightest. He's struggling to get a job, he's about to be evicted from his house, and the love of his life Andie (Empress Schuck) is getting married to another guy. When he unearths his old iMac from 2005, he discovers he can talk to his 2005 self. He then hatches a plan to change the past and save his future before it's too late.

Part science fiction, part magical realism, part time travel story, Throwback Today's story draws from a plethora of similarly themed stories. But Throwback Today makes its own little spin on this particular type of story that I personally enjoyed.

The film takes us through Primo's past and the mistakes he made leading to his current state. While the time manipulation plays itself out, it curiously makes an unexpected turn that brings into question the ethics of time manipulation itself. It's an interesting point where the film reflects on the nature of its own genre, and it's executed on a degree of reflexivity that I didn't expect.

It's a small scale, low key story - no one's saving the world or defeating an alien invasion.  It's characteristic of some Japanese science fiction stories like Katsuyuki Motohiro's Summer Time Machine Blues (2005), where a group of students use a time machine to fix a broken air conditioner remote control. The stakes aren't particularly high, and in that sense I can get behind the apparent banality of Primo's eventual catharsis. In fact, I was pretty invested in what would happen to him from the start, thanks to the film borrowing some of the trappings of a romantic comedy and applying them to Primo's journey.

Perhaps the film could have taken its time developing the character of Macy (Annicka Dolonius,) who finds her life entangled with Primo's own. There are some scenes where the film could have eased better into an ending that could've more effectively tied its various frayed plot threads together.  Sometimes the film makes it challenging to figure out when specific scenes are happening in the timeline. But all in all, I found Throwback Today surprisingly enjoyable. It's a worthy addition to an already strong Cinema One Originals lineup.