Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel Trailer Starring Anna Faris

Posted by on March 3rd, 2009   Filed under: Comedy, Sci-fi, Trailers

It’s unfortunate that Garth Jennings’ adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was such a commercial failure, because now instead of looking forward to more sequels based on the work of Douglas Adams, we have to settle for imitations like Gareth Carrivick’s Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel. That must also be why they have chosen to market this as “Shaun of the Dead meets Dr. Who”, but I suppose if you’re in the market for a quirky British sci-fi comedy, it doesn’t look all that bad.

Starring Anna Faris and Chris O’Dowd of The I.T. Crowd, the story is about three slackers (two geeks and a cynic) who accidentally get caught up in the intricacies of time travel while sitting in a pub. Faris plays a girl from the future, who tries to help the avoid destroying the world through the creation of a paradox. Director Gareth Carrivick and co-stars Marc Wootton and Dean Lennox Kelly also have an extensive background in British sitcoms, but I’m not really familiar with any of them, so I’ll leave it to some of our U.K. readers to fill us in. What do you think, does this look like it has potential? The movie is a co-production of HBO Films and BBC Films, and will hit theatres overseas on April 24th. Check out the trailer below.



  • I hate Anna Faris. A definitive “skip it”.

  • Richard

    Hitchhiker’s Guide was a pretty awesome movie. I never didn’t like it.

  • p

    Nice posting – for more FAQATT info, see the blog on foolingnobody.com (Marc Wootton’s official blog)

  • Wow, even the movie trailer voice guy makes it seem like a Hitchhiker’s Guide rip-off. This is a rental at best.

  • Doug

    That looks *awesome*.

    @Richard: HHGttG was a fun movie. And it even played a lot of scenes from the book very well. It’s problem was that the writer of the screenplay HADN’T READ THE DAMN BOOKS. (until he got the contract) Seriously, Google it. It blows the mind. There was an example, right in the movie, where he used Douglas Adams’ setup to a joke, then failed to deliver the punchline, because he didn’t recognize it as the punchline!

    What I like about this one, from just one viewing of the trailer…

    1) Britcom. Can’t go wrong with British Comedy. Well, you can. Badly. But I’ve got a soft spot for them. So I’ll put that in the “plus” column.

    2) Self-Aware Time Travel! As in, a bunch of scifi geeks, who do things like discuss the nuance of how time travel “would have to work”, thrust into a situation where they get to try it out.

    Okay, it sounds lame said that way, so I’ll rephrase:

    3) Most (maybe all?) time travel movies suffer from some critical flaw. Something that doesn’t *work* and breaks the movie’s internal consistency. By its premise (and I’m basing this on a couple lines of dialog in the trailer), this movie sounds like they may have make an effort to stay consistent. We shall see. Fingers crossed.

    Much fun. (I hope)
    — Doug

  • Xu

    Lol for the final ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT music, used in one episode of FILM JUNK PODCAST as well