Parents' Guide to

Time Toys

By Jennifer Green, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 8+

Quirky sci-fi underdog tale has mild peril, potty humor.

Movie NR 2016 87 minutes
Time Toys Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Community Reviews

age 12+

Based on 1 parent review

age 12+

Good Movie

I love this movie. It's an adventure, comedy, and middle school kids relate very well with it.

This title has:

Great messages

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: (1):
Kids say: Not yet rated

This movie offers some positive, believe-in-yourself messages and it has fun in the process. This is thanks to an underdog storyline that bestows cool superpowers on middle school misfits and to the cast, who look like they're having a blast. Veteran actor Greg Germann is especially entertaining as the Silicon Valley-inspired, skateboard-riding, video game-playing, sugar-addicted genius. He strikes just the right balance between dorky stepdad and malicious mastermind. "Whoever controls technology controls everything," he rightly declares.

What's odd in Time Toys, considering that it's clearly targeted at an audience of boys, is the absence of positive adult male role models. Father figures are either absent (Matt and Boomer's dads), dead (Jenny's dad), evil (Jenny's stepdad) or in need of help from the kids (Wiz). Only a hologram of adult Matt from the future offers a healthy and dependable adult male role model. This could support the film's theme of learning self-reliance, but it feels sadly short-sighted in the larger scheme of things.

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