There’s something about Rhys Darby’s quick, quizzical-voiced Kiwi cadences in “Relax, I’m From the Future” that remind me of the performances in the BBC Radio series (broadcast on NPR in the US) “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

I love the radio version of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchhiker’s Guide.”

Low-budget time-travel movies like “Time Crimes,” “Safety Not Guaranteed” and “Primer” are very much a guilty pleasure.

And “Relax” is Canadian, the second film from writer-director Luke Higginson, and who doesn’t love Canada?

“Relax” is a chatty absurdist comedy with “Terminator” stakes, a future characters either want to change, or are determined not to because the first time traveler from the future whom we meet assures everyone “everything’s going to work out.”

There are cute performances, cute twists and daft scenes as we go back and forth about the sort of future the few people in the know in the present might prefer, and then stumble their way towards achieving or avoiding.

But the film kind of loses itself in its chatter, it its arcane bits of science and plot points and sources of menace. No, the eccentric Casper (Darby) isn’t “changing the fabric of reality.” No, there’s no hint of choosing between assorted “multiverses.”

“No, that’s ridiculous,” Future Man Casper assures disaffected lesbian of the present Holly (Gabrielle Graham), poking a decade of comic book movie obsession right in the eye. “No, there are no time machines,” puncturing another sci-fi trope.

But the film’s brisk pace becomes a burden. Wait, what’s that now? And as not everyone is pitched at Darby’s often antic energy level and the tone that he and almost he alone seems in tune with, the picture just doesn’t do it for me.

I gave the last half of this multiple viewings to be sure I wasn’t missing something, and the film sags, lacking the wit, spark and feather-light touch of the early scenes.

But Darby’s kind of a hoot. He drops in on a suburban Ontario neighborhood, emerging from a cloud of smoke and a “Terminator” (on the cheap) bubble, a weird blond in a blue jumper with a New Zealand accent. Kids are playing, and before the stranger can gasp, “Relax, I’m from the…” a local grump has shouted “PEDERAST” and punched him in the eye.

Casper narrates his tale on a note he writes to the future, griping about his lack of “immediately useful information” on this era — money evades him — and is in a fix until Holly feeds him some inferior quality street-food nachos, hears out this homeless loon in his “from the future” jump suit and eventually takes him in.

Casper knows things, about the band whose T-shirt Holly is wearing and how they’ve already peaked, about the loner/waiter (Julian Richings) at a local diner destined to become a famous cartoonist.

Casper has a handle on present day sports betting (“Back to the Future”) outcomes that he retains from his life in the future He talks to old folks in rest homes, collecting anecdotes and artifacts. And he buries stuff, his stab at “nuclear semiotics,” basically reporting to the future via signs (not language) something about his present.

One reassurance he gives Holly is definitely wrong. Noooo, nobody else from his future is visiting this ear. She (Janine Theriault) is just across town, hunting down time travelers as they emerge from known rips in the fabric of time, zapping them with the film’s lone gadget.

There’s so much science clutter in the film’s convoluted twists on a “Terminator/City on the Edge of Forever” plot that several themes and characters get lost in the shuffle.

This reassuring idea that “everything will work out” begs the question, “Works out for whom?”

That, like most everything else in this promising second feature from a CBC TV editor, is brushed past, the impact of many themes, threats, clever turns and Darby’s sparkling turn in the lead performance muted by the rush to get on to the finale.

Pace is a great thing in any funny movie. But there’s a point when you aren’t finishing a thought, doing justice to this character or that threat. When you’re skipping by the cool stuff, you know you’re going too fast.

Rating: unrated, violence, some profanity

Cast: Rhys Darby, Gabrielle Graham, Janine Theriault and Julian Richings.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Luke Higginson. A Blue Fox release,

Running time: 1:33