Good friends Ruth (Ruth Syratt) and Megan (Megan Stevenson) sell “anything we can get our hands on that’s from the past”, otherwise known as vintage goods, from their shop ‘Cha Cha Cha’ in Muswell Hill, North London. When they find an old dodgem car left by the bins outside their shop, they discover it is in fact a time machine, and an opportunity to obtain a never-ending supply of free stock for their shop!

Filmed as a fly-on-the-wall documentary, we join Ruth and Megan six years later, and business couldn’t be better. We see the friends on various trips to the past, watching from the sidelines of historic battles before stealing as many things as they can, or bartering with historical figures to bring back all sorts of vintage items in pristine condition that they can then sell in their shop. But, unknown to them, their constant time travelling is beginning to cause some strange meteorological phenomena and damage to the fabric of the universe, which draws the attention of a local group of inventors known as the Technology Engineering Scientific Thought and Innovation Society, or ‘T.E.S.T.I.S’.

Ruth and Megan attend some of the invention meetings, introducing us to the wacky group of inventors and their even wackier inventions. Rocket Boots, Predict-o-Goggles, Re-Sizer and even an Invisibility Suit all function with varying degrees of success, providing some very funny moments throughout the movie. Ruth and Megan are recruited to the group, eventually resulting in a name change to B.R.E.S.T.S (British Research Engineering and Scientific Thought Society), in order to reflect the increase in female members.

Two founders of the group, Valerie (Sophie Thompson) and Ralph (Brian Bovell) once starred in an old home learning programme called ‘The Future, Today’, a kind of Tomorrow’s World style show which also featured a robot sidekick called Botty (Johnny Vegas). Unfortunately, the show had been prematurely brought to an end live on air following an incident with a time machine that we discover to be the same one that the girls found, carelessly dumped by Ralph. Inside the dodgem time machine had also been a box of VHS tapes, featuring episodes of the show, which the girls had been watching in their spare time. Ralph warns Ruth and Megan of the dangers of time travel, but after a brief respite, shop rent and other overdue bills start to accumulate and the girls eventually slip back into their old ways, inadvertently opening a portal to another dimension. A not very nice dimension called ‘The Unreason’, where lost things and people end up.

Narrated by Stephen Fry, Time Travel is Dangerous is jam-packed with familiar British faces, including Jane Horrocks, Mark Heap, Guy Henry and even Brian Blessed as Gavin the Octopus. There’s a lot going on, and for the most part, it all holds together well, although I did find myself losing interest ever so slightly later in the movie when we venture into The Unreason. At the heart of it all though is a story of friendship and I loved watching Ruth and Megan together. I certainly wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did, but I found it to be very entertaining, very surreal, very well done, and very funny.

Time Travel is Dangerous is coming to UK cinemas from 28th March.

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