Timer is a romantic comedy written and directed by Jac Schaeffer that is set in the not-too-distant future. A future in which a device has been developed that can tell anyone when he or she will meet their one true love. There are a few drawbacks to the technology, naturally, so for example your timer will remain blank if your significant other hasn’t been equipped with such a device yet. There is also no guarantee that the happy event, “zeroing out,” will happen soon, or indeed at all. And it costs 79.99 plus an additional 1.99/month, so happiness has a very precise price in this future. The question is: is it worth paying?
Timer answers that question, at least in this hypothetical other reality. Whether the answer is satisfying is another thing entirely…
Oona is getting closer to her thirtieth birthday and her timer is still blank. Steph is Oona’s sister and although her timer is showing a number, she is not very happy either, because she will “zero out” when she is forty-three. Both Oona and Steph look for ways to solve their problems, but their approaches couldn’t be less similar. While Steph is looking for happiness in a series of carefree one-night-stands, Oona has gone through a long list of timer-less boyfriends hoping to find the one that will make her timer react once he gets implanted with a device of his own. All this changes when their younger brother turns fourteen and thus reaches the age when he is eligible for a timer of his own. His shows three days from the start, a shock to both sisters, and for Oona the trigger to finally breaking free of the mad rush towards true love that her own timer has imposed on her life so far. She finds solace with Mikey, a grocery clerk, and eventually falls in love with him. At the same time Steph tries to set her sister up with another timer-less prospect for true love, Dan, only to fall for the charismatic widower herself. Or maybe not. The ending is surprising and ulitmately not very satisfying.
It would be unfair to call Timer a bad movie, just as it would be unfair to call it a perfect movie. Neither is it mediocre.
Let me explain.
If we look at Timer in terms of genre, it is a sci-fi rom-com, and I have to say that I have rarely laughed this much in either a sci-fi flick or in a romantic comedy. Timer is very funny. It is also, with one exception, very well written. Oona and Steph can count themselves amongst the most vivid, likeable characters that we have seen in a long time. Mikey, Oona’s 22-year-old grocery clerk boyfriend, manages to be genuinely likeable for the most part, despite his total lack of education. (Ironically this is also the movie’s biggest writing flaw: in an attempt to make Mikey believable as a love interest for clever, upper-class Oona, Jac Schaeffer sometimes goes overboard with his dialogue and makes him too witty, which creates a noticeable inconsistency in the character.) Oona’s and Steph’s parents, their mother especially, are hilarious and insane and real, and some of the movie’s many character scenes are so wonderfully funny that my sides hurt from laughing.
So, yes, Timer could be perfect. Only unfortunately it isn’t. I can’t go into much detail on what makes Timer so imperfect without completely spoiling the ending, but after the credits start rolling one wishes that Jac Schaeffer would have decided to answer the movie’s central question differently. Differently in what the answer is, I would say, but also differently in how it is answered, in what form the process of answering takes.
So, is it still worth seeing then? Yes, I think so. The unfortunate ending sadly robs Timer of a shot at true greatness, but we still had a lot of fun. And although I didn’t like the answer that the movie gave (and neither did my husband), the question is still a very interesting one. Would you get a timer?
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