See You Yesterday: Not much to look at

See You Yesterday (2019) • View trailer 
2.5 stars. Rated TV-MA, for violence and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.8.20

I love time-travel stories.

It’s always fun to see how clever — or not — the writer(s) are, in terms of trying to avoid blatant temporal contradictions. 

When the latest revision to their time-travel backpacks produces something of a mess,
C.J. (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian (Danté Crichlow) attract the wrong sort of
attention from his indulgent grandmother.

Gold standards include Back to the Future, Interstellar, About Time and Edge of Tomorrow, each of which ingeniously handles a twisty premise.

See You Yesterday, alas, does not belong in their company.

Director Stefon Bristol’s odd-duck fantasy doesn’t know what it wants to be, when it grows up. At first blush, the nerdish young protagonists’ aviator goggles and repurposed proton packs — apparently borrowed from Ghostbusters — suggest a larkish tone, even given the gravity of the event they’re attempting to undo by bouncing back in time.

Michael J. Fox’s cameo appearance, as their high school science teacher, also is a nice touch: an affectionate nod to one of the sub-genre’s high points.

But this initial suggestion of a family-friendly frolic is shattered by every character’s relentlessly coarse profanity; the frequent F-bombs are quite off-putting, and definitely warrant an R rating, as opposed to the misleadingly gentler “TV-MA” assigned by virtue of the film being a Netflix original.

Bristol and co-writer Fredrica Bailey also seem far more interested in making a social statement about racist white cops gunning down innocent black victims; the time-travel element becomes mere window-dressing on which to hang a “black lives matter” indictment. But it’s meager lip service; that plot element never goes anywhere. Bristol and Bailey merely state the obvious, as if that’s enough. (Hardly.)

Much worse: Their film’s so-called “conclusion” is a total cop-out, and a textbook case of lazy writing. Bristol and Bailey apparently hit a brick wall and didn’t know what to do next, so they simply … stopped. That’s just sad. And annoying.

The story begins in a deserted alley, as Brooklyn teenage prodigies and best friends C.J. Walker (Eden Duncan-Smith) and Sebastian Thomas (Danté Crichlow) test their newly assembled chrono-displacement backpacks. Sparks fly and soda cans wobble, but nothing else occurs. Back at the drawing board, they ponder what to adjust.

Their neighborhood is rough, with bad actors often seeking folks to intimidate. C.J. is blessed with a protective older brother, Calvin (Brian “Stro” Bradley), who regards her outlandish science experiments with a dubious eye; Sebastian’s cheerful grandmother (Myra Lucretia Taylor) is similarly indulgent. Local residents congregate at a well-stocked bodega run by Carlito (Carlos Arce Jr.).

The shop gets robbed at gunpoint one afternoon, and the two thugs flee past Calvin and his friend Dennis (Wavyy Jonez), who are just walking in the area. A police car screeches to a halt, two trigger-happy cops charge out, and — assuming Calvin and Dennis are the culprits — start shooting. Calvin dies.

The heartbroken C.J., realizing that she potentially has the means to change the past, perfects the time-travel backpacks with Sebastian’s help. They bounce back to just before the incident, but here’s the rub: They have only 10 minutes to act, after which they’ll be returned to the present.

And they quickly discover that altering one parameter has unforeseen consequences.

What follows is the always engaging try-try-again premise lifted from 2004’s The Butterfly Effect (or, for those with excellent memories, the episode “Controlled Experiment” from the 1960s TV series The Outer Limits). In a nod to other time-travel stories, C.J. and Sebastian are aware of the dangers of coming into contact with their in-the-past selves.

Duncan-Smith and Crichlow are likable young actors, comfortable in front of the camera; C.J. and Sebastian have the warm familiarity of longtime friends. That said, the script doesn’t give them much to work with; their respective family dynamics are strictly routine. Indeed, most other characters are defined only vaguely.

Spike Lee is one of this film’s producers, which perhaps explains the story’s rough edge and inner-city aura of peril; there’s a sense that Bristol is trying to emulate the tone of serious Lee dramas such as Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour. But that simply doesn’t mesh with the time-travel premise.

It’s worth noting that Bristol and Bailey expanded this film from their 2017 short of the same title, with the same two young stars. I suspect it worked better at 15 minutes than it does here; the filmmakers have done little to justify the additional hour-plus.

Even so, the production values are reasonably solid — if obviously low-budget — and Bristol handles his feature directing debut with assurance. He’ll likely do better when allowing somebody else to write.

Too bad we can’t go back in time, in order to make that happen with See You Yesterday.