Project Almanac

If the makers of Project Almanac could travel back only a few years, they could see some of their characters and ideas put to better use in other films.

The latest wish-fulfillment fantasy for teenage computer nerds needlessly employs the tired found-footage technique in a time-travel adventure that doesn’t have the narrative discipline to match its energy and ambition.

David (Jonny Weston) is a science prodigy trying to attend MIT without causing a financial hardship to his single mother. He takes after his father, who was an energy researcher prior to his death in a car accident a decade earlier.

Separate discoveries in the basement and the attic unveil his father’s unfinished project — a machine for “temporal relocation,” or time travel. So using those blueprints, David and his nerdy friends collaborate to finish the high-tech contraption, allowing them to venture backward, cautiously at first, engaging in everything from meet-cutes to bully revenge to cheating on chemistry exams.

Just like in almost every time-travel movie, the curious friends engage in good-natured mischief before getting carried away with altering the past in an attempt to influence the future, to the point that it threatens their very existence. Along the way, for some reason, they film every aspect of their lives, despite their stated goal of keeping their activities secret, thus the found-footage conceit.

The charismatic and resourceful teen protagonists are engaging and genuine enough, even if the film’s exploration of the moral ramifications of their actions is half-hearted at best. And it would be nice if the two obligatory females contributed anything to the mix.

The screenplay by newcomers Andrew Stark and Jason Pagan doesn’t bother staying true to those characters, however, and rookie director Dean Israelite opts to ignore scientific explanations in favor of slow-motion visuals of flying household objects.

There’s an annoying lack of attention to detail as the teens build a time machine in the basement — basically in the course of a couple of montages — without any adult assistance or suspicion. Such contrivances prevent the film from earning the requisite suspension of disbelief, and it all builds to a convoluted, eye-rolling climax that’s both predictable and preposterous.

Indeed, anyone trying to scrutinize the film’s adherence to time-travel guidelines established elsewhere will probably walk out with a headache. Or maybe it was just the camerawork.

Rated PG-13, 106 minutes.