Movie recommendation: TiMER

[_MsJack]

I'm not really a rom-com person. Not even. When I go hunting for a movie to watch streaming on Netflix, I'm usually browsing the sci-fi or thriller or horror departments. Maybe the action department. Never the romantic comedies.

But there was one romantic comedy that kept showing up under sci-fi as well: TiMER. I decided to give it a try.

TiMER is an independent romantic comedy that makes use of a sort of magic realism device: the characters in TiMER live in our day and age, but a technology has been developed that can predict the exact moment when one's soul mate enters his or her life. For a small installation fee plus a monthly subscription fee, people can have a timer installed in their wrists which counts down to the moment when they will find true love and beeps when they meet the person with the matching timer. The TiMER corporation boasts that their product "takes the guesswork out of love," and that they have a 98% satisfaction rate among customers with zero'ed out timers, so to their credit, the timers really do seem to work. At this point in time, the timers have become so popular that practically everyone has one.

Things don't always work out so neatly though. The main character is a 29 year-old woman whose timer has not even started counting down yet, which means that her soul mate has not installed a timer. She spends her days hunting down timer-less men and convincing them to get one installed, unwilling to pursue love without a guarantee. On the other hand, her step-sister's timer says that she will not meet her soul mate until age 43. She seems to be going nowhere in life, using the extensive time she has before meeting her soul mate as an excuse to engage in one one-night stand after another.

The film explores what it means to love with and without risk. It covers the stories of those whose timers worked out very well for them as well as those who decided to make love work with mismatched timers.

A lot of things about the film impressed me. I was delighted to see that the main character is played by Emma Caulfield, who played Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The woman seems to have been made to do romantic comedy. Oddly enough, Kali Rocha, who had a few guest roles on Buffy as the object of Spike's unrequited love (Cecily) as well as Anya's best friend (Halfrek), has a small role in the film as well. Desmond Harrington, who plays Joey Quinn on Dexter, is in the film as a timer-less widower who takes an interest in the main character's sister.

The film also had pretty good production values for an independent film and a great soundtrack, both the instrumental stuff and the featured musicians. Oh, and did I mention it was hilarious? I laughed out loud quite a few times. The stepsister had me giggling almost every time she was on screen.

So, if you want a good movie to check out, there's TiMER.

Here are the trailers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYRYyvjKL7E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Iq_KE61Gio

Rated "R" for language.

[_Dr. Shades]

Thanks for the recommendation, MsJack! It sounds really interesting.

[_just me]

Rated R for language only? I can't stand violence at all. :)

Sounds good! I'll have to watch it....it can be my first rated R ever.

[_MsJack]

Language only, no violence whatsoever, no nudity. It easily could have gotten a PG-13 rating, but they use F-words and S-words rather often. I imagine that, since it was an independent film, they didn't care much about the rating.