A Charming Look Into A Certain Future

Details

Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 30 August 2009 16:30

Written by Ted Faraone

TiMER
directed by Jac Schaeffer
starring Emmy Caulfield, Michelle Borth, JoBeth Williams, John Patrick Amedori
seen at The Tribeca Film Festival 2009
The first feature from writer/director Jac Schaeffer, TiMER is a charming look into a future of certainties. It’s part sci-fi, part comedy, part buddy film, part romance, and 100% chick flick. That’s no easy trick.

Oona O’Leary (Emmy Caulfield, best known from TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Beverly Hills 90210), pretty, uptight, about-to-be 30 orthodontist, wants guarantees in life and love. In the futuristic world of TiMER (which looks a lot like Los Angeles here and now), the timer, a device surgically implanted on the wrist, offers one. The timer tells one how exactly how long one will wait to meet one’s true love.  It’s like dating service eHarmony on steroids.

Oona’s problem is that her timer has not even started ticking – which means that she either will never have a true love or that he has not yet got a timer. One’s true love must have a timer for one’s own to start ticking.  (It beeps like a pager when the lucky couple meet.)  Opening scenes show her bringing prospective love connections to the timer franchise to have the device implanted – only to learn that each one is not Mr. Right. That is tough for Oona to swallow.
 
Step-sister Steph, ably played by Borth, has one and it’s counting down – for years to come.  Steph makes the most of it by casual sex with guys whose timers are also counting down – but to different dates. It’s one way of dealing with the inevitable. Borth also figures in an amusing subplot at the old-age home where Steph works involving an octogenarian World War Two vet played by John Ingle of Kitchen Aid commercial fame. Her relationship with Oona offers a buddy aspect to the film.
 
Into Oona’s well-ordered world lands Mikey, supermarket checkout boy (John Patrick Amedori), who also drums in a rock band at the bar Steph tends in her night job. An uncharacteristic (for Oona) romance follows the classic meet cute. Mikey has a timer, but it is revealed as a fake 55 minutes into the pic, a tool to score with chicks still waiting for their soulmates. (“The closer they get to D-Day, the more likely they are to throw you around a little bit.”) He’s also eight years younger than Oona.  According to the timer, Oona’s soulmate is Dan the Man (Desmond Harrington), who doesn’t make an appearance until more than halfway through the picture. JoBeth Williams excels as Steph’s and Oona’s mom, providing much of pic’s comedy.
 
Pic’s moral, if there is one, is revealed by Delphine (Nicki Norris), mistress of Oona’s estranged dad, legendary record producer Rick O’Leary (Muse Watson).  “I had it [the timer] removed,” she tells Oona.  “Your dad isn’t my one, but I love him.  Fuck it.”  Or as Mikey says to Oona in a pivotal scene, “Your problem is not that I can’t give you a guarantee.  It’s that you can’t give me one.”
 
Schaeffer skillfully creates a realistic future not too different from the present and very believable. This film benefits from its snappy dialogue. Editing by Peter Samet and lensing by Andrew Kaiser are more than up to the job.  Maya Siegel’s music, with a tick-tock theme, is well suited to the production.
 
TiMER does not have a distributor as yet and is not rated, but it's a compelling flick that can attract intelligent filmgoers. It may, however, fly well over the heads of its potentially large teenage audience.  

• < Prev
• Next >