Hijinks ensue:  The kids get into trouble once they connect their time machine to a car.  (Paramount Pictures)

What would you do if you had the power to turn back time? Would it be plotting the murder of Hitler or hatching a dinosaur egg and changing the history of humankind?

'€œIt'€™s a time machine. Not a magic wand,'€ says the main character in Project Almanac. It'€™s a line that simply describes the whole story of the teen time-travel movie.

Boy genius David Raskin (Jonny Weston) stumbles upon a prototype of a temporal-alteration machine that his late father previously invented in their basement.

He has some help from his friends Quinn (Sam Lerner) and Adam (Allen Evangelista) '€” both are smart and into science; as well as kid sister Christina (Virginia Gardner), who is in charge of recording all the steps, David builds the machine.

Their school'€™s hot girl Jessie (Sofia Black-D'€™Elia) eventually joins in their time-jumping adventure '€” as they need the battery of her hybrid car to bring the gizmo to life.

The humorous mistakes they make during their time travels '€” which initially can only take place within a three-week window into the past or future '€” fill the first half of the movie.

Even with power in their hands, they refuse to play the superhero, and instead fulfill their teen dreams of driving luxurious sports car and becoming the most popular kids at school.

They are easily lured by instant rewards, rather than considering the impact of their actions '€” although somehow they all believe in the so-called butterfly effect.

(Meaning that big things have small beginnings: The proverbial butterfly can beat its wings and give birth to a typhoon on the far side of the word).

Oh, well. It'€™s a teen-adventure movie, after all.

First-time director Dean Israelite is not trying to bring something new to the table. Those who have watched movies of the same genre and expect new twists will probably go home disappointed.

Instead, the film focuses on a set of charming characters '€” outcasts, nerds, the bullying victim and the popular girl with no real friends '€” giving them down-to-earth and funny lines written by Jason Harry Pagan and Andrew Deutschman, as well as the pop culture allusions that even Woodstock revelers might relate to.

Some viewers might find the found-footage format of the movie boring and irritating. The selfie style, however, is how teens nowadays love to film themselves and post the results to various social media websites.

While tipping his hat to other time-jump movies, Israelite obviously offers his own contributions to the genre, showing the problems of temporal paradoxes and warns of the abuse of power.

The movie also introduces science as a fun thing to do without going overboard. Through trial and error, as the characters show throughout the movie, they learn something new each time.

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