The conflict at the heart of Needle in a Timestack is the stuff of pure, shameless melodrama (and the title is shameless in other ways, too). This is not a problem on its own, but it would be nice if the movie, written and directed by John Ridley, was more about its characters than their situations. At its heart, this is the simple story of a love triangle ― which, eventually, becomes something of a love quadrangle, although one character must disappear for a good share of the runtime to make that happen ― whose participants are flawed, sympathetic and fully human. Ridley has also assembled, for the most part, a solid cast of actors who understand the sincerity of the material just enough that the movie avoids tipping over fully into silliness.
Such a sentiment is only damning with faint praise, though, because the film is already pretty silly in ways that are both frustrating and intriguing. Basically, the world inhabited by the characters of this story (adapted from a short story by Robert Silverberg) is one in which time travel is possible. Not only is it possible, however, but it happens with semi-regularity and without warning or ceremony, as well. And it doesn’t just happen without warning ― the wealthiest 5% of the human population also have some level of control over the travels through time that they themselves have decided to take. At the heart of the conflict, too, is a spurned, potentially malevolent lover who has taken it upon himself to manipulate time to his advantage.
That last sentence implies that this is a certain type of movie, with a climax that resolves this conflict with action or spectacle. Admirably, the film never goes to the unconvincing lengths that such a turn would require. It is, unequivocally and unsubtly, a romantic drama that happens to feature “time shifts,” wherein a wall of fuzzy, literal white noise engulfs a place and people, forcing those people to call their loved ones to make sure things have generally stayed the same. This is the situation in which Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Janine (Cynthia Erivo) find themselves on a regular basis – having to remind each other of their names, their relationship, and other details about their lives.
The questions regarding this kind of time travel are enticing. How do the time shifts work to interrupt the lives of their hapless victims but not to displace them entirely from where they are when it occurs? Why does no one age over the course of so many shifts if time really is passing in the interim? If someone has a dog in one timeline, why do they have a cat in the next, and furthermore, why does no one else remember the dog? Was the dog in the past or an alternate universe? Such questions are also folly to ask of any movie that has romancing to get to and, in any case, uninteresting to Ridley, who simply wants to divide the story into two halves: Nick’s relationship with Janine in the face of her rich ex-boyfriend Tommy (an iffy Orlando Bloom) and an unanticipated examination of Nick’s past relationship with his ex-girlfriend Alex (Freida Pinto).
Both halves rely far too heavily upon the gimmick of the premise and its many logistical questions and logical loopholes to really gain traction, though the performances from Odom and Erivo anchor the melodrama rather nicely. Pinto, too, is quite good as a foil for Janine’s affections and in a role that reveals itself to be far more complex than anticipated. The whole of Needle in a Timestack, though, is melodrama without much of a focus beyond furthering its own line of unattended questions and an overload of sappy tear-jerking.
Photo courtesy of Lionsgate
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