In Time
Time Out New York Project: Issue #835, November 3-9, 2011
★★☆☆☆
Dir. Andrew Niccol. 2011. PG-13. 109mins. Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Cillian Murphy, Matt Bomer.
“Ticktock on the clock, but the party don’t stop.” So sang that great philosopher of our times Ke$ha, whose words are surely gospel to the ruling classes of Andrew Niccol’s innocuous dystopian thriller. In the Truman Show scribe’s imagined future, time is the only commodity. Once you hit a quarter century, your twentysomething features freeze and a neon-green clock on your arm starts counting down the days to expiration. If you’re among the lucky few who “come from time” (hardy har), you can practically live forever. But if you’re a ghetto dweller like Will Salas (Timberlake), existence is literally a day-by-day proposition. That is until Will is gifted 100 years by a suicidal octogenarian pretty boy (well played by Bomer) and starts turning the system against itself with the help of a rebellious rich girl (Seyfried).
The film’s premise is both exceedingly clever and cannily bankable. (A Hollywood production in which every character has to be 25 or under? Score!) But Niccol’s attempts at satire are toothless, relying mostly on limp turns of phrase — “Clean his clock” — or stale sight gags, e.g., J.Tim’s mom is played by the younger-than-he-is Olivia Wilde. Once In Time fully embraces its inner fight-the-power! action flick, this generic future-shock allegory makes even less of an impression. For a real dose of revolutionary fervor, you’d do better to head down to Occupy Wall Street.—Keith Uhlich
