Ever wonder what Everything Everywhere All at Once would have been like with time travel? Enter Escape from the 21st Century. Three teens figure out how to jump into their bodies 20 years in the future in this bombastic sci-fi comedy.
★★★★☆
In 1999, on a planet that almost perfectly resembles our own, three teenage boys—Pao Pao (Qixuan Kang), Chengyong (Zhuozhao Li), and Wang Zha (Yichen Chen)—are imbued with an extraordinary ability. Whenever they sneeze, they leap forward twenty years into the body of their future selves, and none of the boys end up where they ever could have predicted.
The film plunges its young protagonists into a jarring future: Chengyong, the idolised leader, finds himself in a dystopian 2019, his perfect life and girlfriend Yang Yi (Fanding Ma) replaced with a criminal empire and a ruthless partner (Xiaoliang Wu). Wang Zha, the group’s self-proclaimed klutz, emerges as a spy within this very empire, aligned with a determined journalist (Elane Zhong). Pao Pao, burdened by insecurities, discovers himself in a rugged and handsome new body (Leon Lee). Not only that, it turns out that he is in a relationship with an adult, Yang Yi (Yanmanzi Zhu). What follows next is a quest to take down a corporate mega villain hellbent on using the boys’ ability to bring people back from 1999.
Li Yang, making his solo directorial return after 2011’s Lee’s Adventure, is clearly no stranger to weaving time-travel mechanics into personal narratives. His previous film, co-directed with Frant Gwo (The Wandering Earth), flirted with temporal manipulation via video game logic. Here, he ups the ante, crafting a frenzied mix of live-action and animation that might remind some of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World—if Scott Pilgrim had been filtered through a dystopian lens.
Visually, Li Yang has a keen eye for striking compositions—though some of his stylistic flourishes feel less like inspired choices and more like cinematic quirks without clear intent. An upside-down van shot mid-chase? An aspect ratio shift that doesn’t signify anything particularly relevant? A character quite literally grabbing subtitles off the screen? These flourishes will either charm or alienate, depending on a viewer’s tolerance for playful form.
Thanks to the cinematography by Saba Mazloum, Escape from the 21st Century boasts a maelstrom of cutaways, cartoon/video game effects, and fast cuts, all assembled to dizzying effect. The soundtrack leans into this chaos with gleeful abandon—if you haven’t embraced the film’s spirit by the time Wang Zha and Liu make a grand exit to the music of Joan Baez, or when a massive fight erupts to the bombastic strains of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding Out for a Hero’, then you might be watching the wrong movie.
The opening act does an admirable job setting up the rules; however, after each sneeze-induced leap, our protagonists receive vital exposition from other characters without much skepticism or surprise. Although this lines up with the simplistic nature of a video game narrative, this still dampens some of the film’s initial intrigue. But if Escape from the 21st Century occasionally fumbles its world-building, it more than makes up for it in sheer energy.
This movie is full of over-the-top moments, with everything dialed to 11. One particularly absurd scene sees an attacker launching a bomb, sending thousands of money bills flying through the room. Cue bullet-time slow-mo as Han Guang (Xiaolang Wu), future-Chengyong’s ruthless partner, throws a single bill with such strength, speed, and precision that it slices the attacker’s arm clean off. It’s the kind of ridiculous, hyper-stylised action that defines the film’s most memorable moments.
When the film leans into its absurdity with purpose, it shines. A standout sequence sees two characters mid-fight in a 2019 restaurant, only to be launched back to 1999 mid-sneeze—where they promptly resume their brawl in a high school classroom. At one point, mid-fight, one of them grabs a pepper shaker and makes the other sneeze, forcing him to return to his weaker 1999 body. The potential for a genre-defining action set piece is tantalisingly close, but the film seems too restless to capitalise on it fully. This pattern recurs throughout: flashes of brilliance that never quite coalesce into a consistently satisfying whole.
Yet beneath all the chaos, the film wrestles with something deeper. The three friends’ desperate quest to fix the future speaks to a universal fear that the world is getting worse. Each of them struggles with the fear of losing their families, their friends, their loves, and—perhaps most painfully—themselves. Even the film’s villains, as cartoonishly Bond-villain-esque as they are, are motivated by nostalgia, clinging to an idealised past in their desperate attempt to reshape the future.
The narrative’s refusal to deliver a traditionally uplifting resolution is one of its strongest assets. While many sci-fi blockbusters serve up dystopian imagery only to reassure us that hope prevails, Li Yang leans into the uncertainty. “I thought I could make the summer of 1999 last forever,” Chengyong laments. That desperate longing for lost innocence permeates every frame, punctuated by needle drops that range from the operatic Vivaldi’s Summer to the bombastic ‘Holding Out for a Hero’.
The Verdict
Does the film do too much? Undoubtedly. Does it sometimes do too little in the moments that matter most? Frustratingly, yes. But what Escape from the 21st Century lacks in narrative discipline, it makes up for in sheer audacity. It is both a love letter to and a cautionary tale about nostalgia, a film that knows full well it is straining at the seams but charges ahead regardless, laughing in the face of coherence. For those willing to surrender to its logic, it offers a thrilling, if uneven, ride.
Words by Kieran Webb
Escape From The 21st Century is now available to stream digitally and on Blu-ray from 24 March.
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