I really wanted to give it a go. An indie Aussie sci-fi comedy. But the characters are so flat, the dialogue so flat, the location so ridiculous, and the plot beyond ridiculous.

Did I say NOT funny!

Saw this at the Leiden Film Festival 2014 (LIFF). What will you do when given the chance to "repair" a failed romantic weekend by changing the past and reliving those days again in a new setup?? Though I found the end result disappointing, there were several positive elements in this film. Firstly, it did not waste resources in the making: 3 actors in total, a single location, and without a gadget overload. Secondly, the deserted sea resort offered an excellent décor with ample opportunities for seeing things from different angles, running parallel scenes in various rooms, and letting variants from the protagonists meet, or even see one copy meeting another. Thirdly, the successive chapters were clearly labeled "xx years later", a great help while trying to follow the story line while it developed in (for me) mysterious ways.

On the negative side, I found the movie mildly interesting overall, not thought provoking in any way, no mind bending time paradoxes, at least none that I felt as challenging. The role of the gadgets (looked like EEG headsets, as used in hospital) was poorly explained, and I saw no one actually wearing them, so it is not clear what their purpose was in the proceedings. Devices and schematics might have looked highly technical for the average layman, but were in fact outdated for at least 30 years. The protagonists did not interest me at all, so I was not pulled in by the turn of events that this movie presented to us. It merely looked a bit unnatural, like finding a way to turn a basically good idea into a feature length movie without having enough material to fill the allotted time.

All in all, I got less than what I had expected. (And I had serious problems to stay awake. It may not be completely the film's fault, but anyway it was a fact.) My fault may be that I've read too many SF books in my life, and usually observe that movies, within their limited time frame, cannot present a consistent plot without loop holes in the time travel section. For some reason, books prove to be a better place to design a believable setup with richer details. Anyway, the idea behind this film was fresh, the décor was very well chosen, the actors were casted well, and all did their best to cope with the script. Yet, I'm still surprised about the many good things other reviewers found in this film, all of which I regrettably overlooked (so it seems).

An Australian micro-budget indie feature that as well as succeeding in taking the science, out of fiction, manages simultaneously to take the travel out of time. We are thus presented with a cheap hybrid, borrowing themes and situations from better films such as Time Crimes, Multiplicity and Groundhog Day using virtually the one desert location (ludicrously masquerading as some supposedly attractive beach tourist resort),the one set and a cast of three. But besides the very obvious budget limitations, the film fails, due to the unattractiveness of the characters and the plain unbelievability of the story.

Even pure fantasies such as the afore-mentioned Groundhog Day, have elements founded in reality, to which we can easily relate and empathise. The Infinite Man bothers with none of this. Every thing just looks and sounds fake from the "resort" location, to the "scientist" in name only, to the (wait for it) homicidally violent, ex-olympian. The cringeworthy dialogue and cheesy, even creepy "romantic sub-plot, does absolutely nothing to alleviate the film's clear failings. However, almost mercifully, the short running time, (which for this writer couldn't come quick enough) does.