Every once in a while, a movie comes along that is so shockingly good, that is everything you hoped it would be and more, that it redefines your expectations for not only the creative team behind it (I’m talking actors, directors, cinematographers, etc), but the genre itself. They become an experience you don’t want to have too often so as not to lessen their impact. Like how hearing a joke too often makes it not as funny, you want to savor it, mete it out in small doses, make sure to stave off the effects of diminishing returns as long as possible. I’m talking about Safety Not Guaranteed and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, movies that deeply affect my views on film and what the medium can do, while putting a smile (and sometimes salty eye water droplets) on your face.
Relax, I’m From the Future (available to stream on Prime) is not one of those movies. I really hoped it would be the next Safety Not Guaranteed, but while I did enjoy it, it wasn’t quite at that level. What it is, however, is an incredibly sweet and charming time travel film about the importance of trying. But I’ll get to that later. If you’re unfamiliar, Relax is a 2022 film by writer/director Luke Higginson, a feature length adaptation of his 2013 short of the same name, starring Rhys Darby (whom you may know from Flight of the Conchords, the main NPC in the new Jumanji films, or as gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet in Our Flag Means Death) and Gabrielle Graham (who is in the new Netflix miniseries The Madness). Darby plays Casper, a well-meaning and fairly unprepared time traveler who comes to present day Ontario to gather more information about the past and experience it for himself. When reaching the 21st century, he realizes that he has just about no money, no way to feed or clothe himself in anything but the bodysuit he traveled in, and proceeds to write notes on scraps of trash with a borrowed pen from a convenience store clerk. He heads to the local library to start the process, but is kicked out after the librarian finds him asleep in the stacks.
Graham plays Holly, a jaded, aimless young woman drifting through life, fed up with the world. She crosses paths with Casper when she takes pity on him and gives him the nachos she didn’t like and then invites him to a show that she’s working for the band on her t-shirt, which he recognizes. From there, the two of them bond over booze, cigarettes, and cocaine (a recipe for fast friendship, if I’ve ever heard one), and he tells her that he’s from the future and that he has a plan. They talk about the concept of time travel, to which Holly mentions that as a Black lesbian, most of history is a nightmare for her, and the idea of going back in time is just not appealing. Of course, as any sane person would, she doesn’t believe him when he tells her he’s a time traveler, so after a trip to a diner to prove it, they talk very briefly about the mechanics of time travel.
This is where the movie really pivots from a lot of time travel films; the mechanics aren’t important. Casper very briefly explains how it works; it’s a one way trip through a sort of wormhole to the past, a portal, if you will. She asks about changing the future and creating a multiverse through the butterfly effect, but Casper very quickly shoots that down. It’s a mushy blob, time is; it adapts to the changes and as long as no big ones are made, everything basically works out okay. And that’s it. No scientific justification, no pseudoscientific pontificating, just a quick conversation and they get on with the narrative. I really appreciate that, because it’s easy to get stuck on the science of something that’s completely theoretical. It’s just not worth the runtime to me to get a science lesson on something that doesn’t exist. Getting stuck in the weeds just isn’t the best use of time, in my opinion and I’m glad the movie doesn’t spin its wheels here and bloat the 94 minute runtime with a bunch of fake science.
As they discuss the world, Holly talks about how she doesn’t care about anything anymore. It’s too hard to care. Every time she does, she finds out the people behind it are Nazis, rapists, or both. “Everything is a trap…nothing is just good,” she says. And boy do I feel this hard. This speaks directly to the millennial experience of the world. I remember being younger and believing in things, only to be let down time and time again. I can’t sit down and discuss The Usual Suspects, a brilliant film I love, without having to address the Kevin Spacey of it all, for example. And how many people grew up on Harry Potter only to now be conflicted by their feelings for a story that affected them emotionally because its creator is a raging transphobe who has decided that her entire existence is going to be dedicated to harming people who are just trying go through their lives the best way they know how? Joss Whedon, too, as much as I love Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And now the horrible, monstrous details of Neil Gaiman are coming to light; I’m still processing that, as many people are. How many times does it take, how many times can you be burned by caring about something before you decide to just wall yourself off and let your heart go cold because the world is full of awful people who try to convince you they’re not awful, only to have the truth exposed? They use you, they use your desire to care, your desire to make the world a better place and belong in it, and then all of a sudden you realize, like Wile E. Coyote looking down after he’s run off a cliff, that there’s just a dust cloud and a drop beneath your feet. And that makes it hard to care about—and hope for—anything in the world. It’s okay, though. Casper has a plan.
Casper wants to use his future knowledge to make some money, that’s Phase 1. All low impact stuff, nothing that would get you famous, nothing that would raise too many eyebrows, nothing that would affect the mushy blob we call time. Phase 2 is save the world. He’s much more vague about the how, but it seems that Phase 2 hinges pretty strongly on a waiter who draws in his off time, apparently, and this leads to a fair bit of dark comedy that Rhys Darby plays off very well. Holly, of course, is in. She’s tired of struggling, tired of working for other people to barely get by, to go through the parade of the unfulfilled and unfulfilling that she calls her life. Easy money, little work, and staying off the radar are hugely appealing to her, as I think it would be to a lot of people. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to make your living off placing bets on sure things? I’m not talking Biff Tannen, change the world rich; but being completely comfortable for the rest of your life without any of the trappings that come with fame and fortune? Who wouldn’t jump at that opportunity? I know I would. We don’t get a lot of time here, yet so many of us toil endlessly in jobs we don’t like while our blue sphere spins around a big yellow sphere in a big, empty black sky. Of course this is an attractive offer. While Holly does this, which bankrolls Casper because she’s a real person with a credit card and a Social Insurance Number (Canada’s equivalent to the SSN), Casper goes about with his goal. Learning about the past, the real lives of the people here, and preserving artifacts for the future. It’s all very sweet, really. He befriends the elderly, people he can be honest with because the time they have left isn’t enough to affect the timeline. He’s very kind with them, lending them an ear and genuinely caring about their well-being. It could have come off as exploitative, but Darby plays it with earnest and it works. Of course, there are complications along the way and a good amount of fish-out-of-water comedy that is aided by Darby’s New Zealand accent and his excellent comedic timing, which allows him to pull off even the darker moments with aplomb. Rhys Darby really is an underrated comic actor. Casper gathers information for months, Holly lives comfortably, and all seems well for the time being. If you’ve seen a movie before, you’ll know it probably doesn’t stay that way.
Humanity seems to always be hurtling towards its destruction, for as long as I can remember, anyway. Every 80 years or so, we seem to be on the precipice of a cataclysm; it seems as long as there’s been recorded history, there have been people calling it the end times. So it’s always been this sort of nebulous feeling of impending doom, people don’t really know how they’d act when faced with the concrete. Holding up a sign that says “the end is nigh” probably wouldn’t cut it and rocking back and forth with your arms around your knees and crying probably seems logical, but it’s not the most useful course of action. But as the movie draws to its third act and the future comes into plain view, Holly is forced to look at herself in a different light. Casper keeps assuring her that everything works out okay and he’s got a plan. But when it comes right down to it, the question remains: everything works out, but for who? Who is left when the dust of the future settles? Who is okay after the existential dread we feel, that we keep locked in a cage in the back of our minds, comes to a head in a very real way? What does okay even mean after that?
And this is where the movie really shines as a narrative and it’s what makes Relax, I’m From the Future such a pleasant movie to watch, despite its flaws. The plot is fairly simple, the plan is fairly simple, Casper is fairly simple. But the message—the feeling that despite the futility, despite the slow march of progress, despite being burned more times than you can count—that you should still care, that you should still try to make the world better, that the cataclysm, the apocalypse is not written in stone, is not an inevitability, could not be more needed. If you try, you fail. If you fail, you try again. And if you fail again, you dust yourself off and get back to it. It takes more than the names that are written in history books to change the world. It takes everyday people, waking up, going to jobs they hate, caring about things, and doing something, no matter how little, about them. It’s a big, heavy world out there, but there are twice as many shoulders as there are people to carry the weight. As long as people continue to step up and put their shoulders side by side with other people’s shoulders, our fate is not sealed. Our future isn’t written, not just yet. And that’s why Relax is a movie I won’t savor, not one I’ll only trot for special occasions, and is one I’ll watch over and over again, because I need that reminder sometimes.