TiMER 0
When it comes to romantic comedies, Hollywood has a formula to rule them all: lovers meet, conflicts ensue, sad music intervenes, and a race against time that culminates in a frantic heartfelt confession. Jennifer Aniston is cast. A quirky, lesser known actress plays her best friend or sister. Josh Duhamel or Matthew McConnauhey are leading men. Cheesy top 40 songs are dispersed throughout. And, like shady massage parlors, happy endings are guaranteed.
What do you get when you take a film, stripped of typical Hollywood conventions, add a dose of originality and a dash of unpredictability? You get a quirky, delightful film like TiMER – a movie who’s premise rests on a simple question: What if a small device could determine the precise moment we meet our soul mate? After all, when it comes to love, timing is everything – is it not?
This story arc is what sets TiMER apart from the usual stack of craptacular rom-coms – the introduction of a sci-fi-esq twist, the idea that love can be preprogrammed, literally, not just by some inscrutable idea of destiny, but by actual mechanisms within our bodies. Sounds a tad over the top right? Well, of course it is. The loftiness is what makes it fun. In order to truly enjoy Timer, you have to suspend reasoning and rational logic. Accept the implausible premise and resist the urge of over-analyzing and looking too much into it. It’s not a “thinking” movie – it’s a romantic comedy, one augmented by a team of good writers and a set of likable actors.
Emma Caulfield plays Oona O’Leary, a leading lady of standard conventions – pretty, petite, single and successful. She’s also desperate to know the verdict of her blank timer, a sign that her true love is out there somewhere without a timer of their own. Admittedly, the anal nature of her character gets pretty annoying – sure, she just wants to know who her true love is, but sort of wish she would just ride some chill waves [via Hipsterrunoff] and learn to go with the flow. She reminds you of those unsettling micromanaging types who need to be in control of everything in their lives at all times. I can’t deal with those folks. But luckily for Oona, she meets Mikey, an attractive, younger check-out clerk, who, is perhaps the best thing about the movie. He introduces her to concepts like “living in the moment”, which, to someone like Oona, is pretty novel. As expected, fireworks [a la cheesy pop act Katy Perry] erupt. The catch? While her timer remains blank, his is set to go off in four months. What will happen? Like MTV Diaries – you think you know, but you have no idea. (Lame catch-phrase intentional!)
Onto the whole reason I decided to write this review – I needed a conduit for indulging in the high crush-factor of Mikey’s character (played by John Patrick Amedori). That a young twenty-something can display so much tenderness and vulnerability while maintaining his juvenile, fratboy qualities is quite endearing to someone like myself. That, and his longer, mid-90′s rocker hairstyle that is so uncommon these days, reminding me of my first elementary school crush (oh the memories of young love). His charm and youthful charisma carry the film like a wayward ship, weathering the overly-emotional scenes and sappy sentimentality that nearly derail the movie. Safe to say that without him, I would have enjoyed the movie much less. Dudes like him did not seem to exist during my dating days; harmless rocker with a heart, the kind of guy many young females would lust for, except he leaves Oona conflicted – after all, she and he are not meant to be, agreed?
Without giving away spoilers, I’ll say that many commenters on the web weren’t happy with the ending, claiming it “ruined the movie” and that everything was going well, up until that point. I thought the sequence of events and the ending they led up to were congruent enough – in fact, it was exactly what I wanted to happen. Whether one would agree or not, the message here is that one must always trust their hearts and these characters are designed such that their actions are natural and rational.
As stated earlier however, this isn’t really a thinking piece – It’s a playful film in the realm of an over-saturated and over-played genre known to have perpetuated false notions of love and relationships. While this movie does eventually succumb to the conventional Hollywood chokehold, it is still smart enough that it offers its own clever perspective on the science (fiction) of love.