The family drama "In the Blink of an Eye" premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of this year and was then released on Hulu at the end of February. Such a quick turnaround for this film getting a spot on a popular streaming platform must mean a lot of people loved it at Sundance. At least, that’s what I thought when I learned about this turnaround. Then I actually watched the film…..and I became solidly confused.
"In the Blink of an Eye" is a philosophical, wide-ranging drama exploring the important emotional benchmarks of human life through three separate storylines.
One: a family of neanderthals living on a prehistoric earth.
Two: a female anthropology graduate student in 2025.
And three: a female astronaut traveling through space alone to a faraway planet in the year 2417.
Each of the main characters in these three storylines face death, grief, companionship, joy, and rebirth.
Presenting these benchmarks in different time periods is this film’s artsy attempt at saying the various emotional touchstones of our lives are universal no matter their time and place. As each story line unfolds, you learn how each of them relates to, or influences, the other, illustrating the power of human connectedness across time. These themes may sound inspiring and touching, right? Reminding viewers to think of the past, present, and future to ensure our collective progress and ensure our collective humanity. But I didn’t feel any of this.
During the 93 minute run-time of watching In the Blink of an Eye on my couch at home, a cardinal sin swept over my mind. I wanted to check my phone…and I never look at my phone while watching a film. It didn’t take long for me to realize I was bored. None of the characters are interesting to watch, and none of the dialogue feels special or brimming with feeling. So many times, I thought this film was like an after-school special that used to run on TV in the 1990s. Its limp reach at engaging behavior is so timid, so concerned about remaining likeable, that it fails to hold my interest.
It isn’t hard to imagine more exciting or inventive versions of this same multi-story treatment of disparate lives intersecting with each other. Some examples include "Magnolia" (1999), "The Fountain"(2006), and "Cloud Atlas" (2012). Whether these films are brilliant or lifeless is up to you. But each of those films swings hard. They swing for the fences with ambitious story structures, heavily layered ideas, and large casts of characters. "In the Blink of an Eye" has none of that. It can barely flex its muscles to swing anything.
Director Andrew Stanton has been a long-time creator with Pixar studios, and he directed the fantastic animated masterpieces "Finding Nemo" (2003) and "WALL-E" (2008). He and the screenwriter Colby Day ("Spaceman," 2014) seemed to have tunnel vision trying to recreate the playful plucky vibe of Pixar films but in a more serious, live-action, PG13 film. It tries to have a mature edge including bits of dialogue on sex and pornography (and this dialogue is casually matter-of-fact). But these halfhearted attempts keep this film a flat vacillation between monotonous and mundane.
