‘In the Blink of an Eye’ Review: Rashida Jones, Kate McKinnon and Some Cavemen Teach Us a Maudlin, Obvious Message About Life

I will admit upfront that I did cry, briefly, towards the end of Andrew Stanton’s new triptych film In the Blink of an Eyea pharmaceutical ad-looking movie about the interconnected sprawl of humanity. I realize the movie’s myriad faults, its cold and sleek approximation of mortal meaning, its hokey techno-optimistic vision of the future of us. And yet, a particular aspect of the film’s time-spanning vastness managed to get me. What exactly did the trick must remain a mystery lest I spoil the movie, but know that it is possible to get something out of what is otherwise constructed like the world’s longest, most expensive, vaguest Super Bowl commercial for some kind of secretly sinister mega-conglomerate.

In the blink of an eye was, almost a decade ago, a Black List screenplay by Colby Day. Three years ago, it was shot by Stanton, a Pixar fixture whose only other live-action film, John Carterwas such an atomic bomb that it put Stanton in prison for over a decade. (He was briefly given work-release to make Finding Dory.) That this film has sat on the shelf for a few years perhaps tells you all you need to know about its quality. Although, honestly, it’s not that bad.

It’s well-intentioned, is the thing. It wants to celebrate life, to allay our fears of death, to reassure us that we are all part of some timeless collective spirit and thus none of us really ever disappear. That’s sappy but sweet stuff, arriving at a time when so much of the human project seems bent toward cruelty and annihilation. (Though, it is kind of funny to follow the thesis of In the Blink of an Eye to the ends of its implication; are you saying that Hitler and Pol Pot and, I don’t know, Leona Helmsley are still with us, lingering in the air as part of our great one-ness? Yikes!) So it is hard, maybe impossible, to utterly hate the film, even if its pat message of hope is wholly inadequate in buttressing us against the merciless chaos of existence.

The film is divided into thirds. The first storyline takes place about 47,000 years ago and concerns a family of Neanderthals, extinct cousins ​​of ours who were both killed off by and blended into the homo sapiens clique currently ruling the world. Both death and rejuvenation color the lives of these nomadic creatures, just as death and rejuvenation come to bear on modern-day characters played by Rashida Jones and Daveed Diggs. Jones is a researcher at Princeton who is studying the bones of her Neanderthal co-star. Jones’ character is also caring for a dying mother, looking bitterly at all that is fleeting in life without appreciating the future being built before her.

That future is represented in the figure of Kate McKinnon, who plays a lonely scientist on a spaceship bound for a new colony planet in the 25th century. She’s got a boat full of human ova that will eventually be electronically fertilized, thus producing the first generation of settlers on a new Earth. This faraway narrative is connected to the past in one crucial way, although the bond is not as stirring and sturdy as the filmmakers seem to think it is.

The real trouble with In the Blink of an Eye is that its plots are so broad and generic. It would be much more powerful to see really detailed, specific stories identified as parts of a grandly universal human experience. As is, it feels like Stanton and Day are just trying to remind us of the most essential, obvious facets of being alive in the world. Which isn’t terribly useful or inspiring. Yeah, I know people die and people have babies and that’s been happening for a very, very long time. And?

Stanton’s actors do their noble best to breathe something true into these stock generalizations. It is an odd thrill to see McKinnon shed much of her sideways shtick and do things sincerely. She gets the last word of the film in a wholly serious monologue that she pretty much pulls off. (She is responsible for the moment that made me cry, by the way.)

But overall, there is so little texture to these character arcs that the actors are mostly just working in service of a blandly uplifting message. It’s as if they’ve all been commissioned by a well-funded science museum to lend their bodies and voices to the cause of slickly edible up-with-people infotainment.

Only, we don’t really learn much in the film. We are mostly meant to feel the movie, to allow our souls to be prodded and hugged tightly by this benevolent picture’s generous assessment of the most dangerous animal to ever exist on the planet. I’m not really buying it on the whole, and yet I did buy just enough of it that I shed a tear at the end, and thought, “Yeah, people really do be like that.” (It doesn’t hurt that Thomas Newman, the great purveyor of melancholy awe, wrote the score.) I’m not sure that’s quite the profound revelation and catharsis this ambitious film is aiming for, but it’s not nothing.