It’s Christmas Eve and the profoundly mulleted Tony Towers (Michael Sheen) is taking a train from London back to his home city of Nottingham to introduce his new girlfriend (Nathalie Emmanuel) to his family. The grainy video and joke shop wigs leave us in no doubt that we are in the 1980s.
But, when he moves up the train in search of the catering carriage, he spots the CDs, Gameboys and mobile phones of the mid-90s. Tony no longer looks like an even naffer Peter Stringfellow but a booze-addled wreck.
It seems his career doesn’t work out how he expected.
Further trips up and down the train send him hopping back and forth in time to days of rock ‘n’ roll excess and financial ruin.
Tony, weirdly, takes it in his stride, quickly twigging that he can change his fate by changing past decisions. Writer-director Julian Kemp is probably inspired by It’s A Wonderful Life rather than the new Spider-Man movie.
But, while Sheen impresses, the painfully broad turns from his co-stars and the far-from-subtle costume department transport us to an alternate world of wildly inappropriate children’s TV.
On Sky Cinema and NOW from Saturday, December 18