Review: Relax, I’m From the Future

By John Corrado

★★★ (out of 4)

In the Canadian time travel comedy Relax, I’m From the Future, New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby is delightfully able to take centre stage as Casper, a time traveller from an unspecified point in the future, who lands back in the 2020s.

The title comes from Casper’s reassurance to present day citizens concerned by his appearance and foreknowledge (“relax, I’m from the future!”). The movie opens with him bursting onto the street wearing a purple body suit in the middle of a children’s street hockey game, immediately encountering a concerned father.

Casper brings the same gleeful, wide-eyed optimism to every interaction, reassuring everyone that things do eventually work out in the future. He is trying to gain more knowledge of the 21st century, explaining that a lot of information and media has been lost due to poor archiving.

Casper teams up with Holly (Gabrielle Graham), a self-described “queer, black, vagina-haver” apathetic about the state of the world, who mistakes him for a homeless person. The two make a formidable team (bonding over the Toronto rock band PUP and sharing cocaine that Casper excitedly tells her is “legal in the future”), and they find a way to make money through sports betting, using his future knowledge.

Casper ropes Holly into his scheme by assuring her this is all part of a two-pronged plan; first, make money, second, save the world. What exactly this plan is, is cleverly teased out over the course of the film. Meanwhile, he is being pursued by Doris (Janine Theriault), a future agent tasked with eliminating loose ends, who disappears people in a poof of dust with her future weapon. Casper is also preoccupied with Percy (Julian Richings), a depressed artist working in a diner, whose cartoon doodles will become beloved countercultural art in the future.

The feature debut of Canadian writer-director Luke Higginson, expanding his 2013 short of the same name, the shot-in-Hamilton film is effectively able to mix some more heady sci-fi ideas about altering timelines in a lighthearted comedic package. Higginson’s screenplay gets increasingly loopy as it goes along and does threaten to go off the rails a little bit in the last act, but all the convoluted story threads do come together in a satisfying way by the end.

It’s buoyed by Darby’s affable presence, carrying the film with his charming performance as a hapless time traveller looking to have a good time (almost like a much more grounded Austin Powers). Darby also shares appealing chemistry with Graham, as the two of them develop a sort of easy, back-and-forth rapport together that allows for a compelling cynic versus optimist dynamic between their mismatched characters Holly and Casper. The film is topped off with a plum role for character actor Richings, as an underground cartoonist waiting to be discovered.

Higginson does a decent job of handling the inherent tonal shifts, from goofy, absurd comedy to deeper, more existential stakes. This is a time travel comedy that also has some deeper things on its mind about which people will be remembered as important in the grand scheme of things and how much you should do to change the world, or if you should just do nothing and let things happen. The story touches on the importance of media preservation for future generations, a message that perhaps resonates most right now. Furthermore, though, Relax, I’m From the Future is able to just offer an enjoyable good time.