Have you ever seen the John Mulaney stand-up on the pitch meeting for Back to the Future? He kinda nails the triviality of the plot. Don’t get me wrong, Back to the Future is a four-star film to me … but in my world, being problematic and four-stars can happen. Loving a film and acknowledging it has faults is not only acceptable; I can claim objective greatness of a film in which I whole-heartedly agree there are faults.
That said … there should be a Mulaney test for every movie involving a time travel device. In my mind, it will consist of three simple questions: 1) What do(es) the time traveler(s) hope to achieve? 2) Is that problem significant enough to necessitate time travel (a power that, in my estimation, outweighs every other superpower imagined by man)? 3) What is the best way to solve the given problem using time travel (i.e. did the screenwriter think this one through)?
All things considered, Back to the Future would actually pass the test because in the film Marty doesn’t use time travel, time travel uses Marty. The only thing he wants out of time travel is to return to his home, damage minimized, which actually seems like reasonable use of this awesome power.
Captain Nova, however … I’m not sold.
The film doesn’t tell us if Nova (Kika van de Vijver, Nova at age 16, Anniek Pheifer, Nova at age 37) is the world’s first time traveler, but we kind-of assume it, especially as the process has one big side-effect: the time travel 
capsule occupant ages/de-ages with the time jumped. So while 37-year-old Nova did indeed intend to go back 21 years to warn her fellow human beings about global climate crisis, she didn’t intend to be 16 when she got there.
That’s gonna be a problem, huh? How exactly does a 16-year-old girl warn the world of climate crisis? Hold up. Hold up. Is Greta Thunberg a time traveler? I suppose that makes as much sense as anything else that’s happened in the past ten years.
How do you get anybody to take you seriously when you are 16? And how do you do it when so many of those with true power have no desire whatsoever to change their game plan? You can see the problem.
Luckily, Nova has a secret weapon. She has enlisted the help of a 16-year-old boy, Nas (Marouane Maftah). Now they can be ignored in half the time!
Part of me is amused that the Dutch think they could be responsible for global disaster by themselves. You mean it’s not us?! Cool. Let’s ride that blame game all the way back to the stable! Damn those Dutch van Jerks! Always ruinin’ the planet … with their tulips and windmills and speedskates; I just knew that diking stuff was gonna destroy the environment.
What’s left of the adventure turns into something of a buddy road picture … with futuristic stun guns. And one that doesn’t pass my Mulaney test. I really wanted to enjoy this picture, and I loved the novelty where Nova exists in two places at the same time, however, Captain Nova invested a great deal in two fairly weak teen actors and a plot that made little sense. I’m sure there exist people who found this film fun, but I’m not among them, nor can I imagine that present-day throng. Perhaps the film could time travel backwards to find its audience.
Would I say Nova does necessarily blow?
Perhaps not, but it’s a challenge, doncha know?
Latinos cold have warned
Against a plot unadorned
Cuz in Spanish Nova means “don’t go”
Not Rated, 86 Minutes
Director: Maurice Trouwborst (Is it me, or does “trou-burst” sound like the name of a Dutch porn star?)
Writer: Lotte Tabbers, Maurice Trouwborst
Genre: VanBack to the Fujture
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: SJW
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Time travel theorists
