Here is a movie that works almost entirely because of its commitment to a genuinely intriguing premise. Director Greg Björkman, who co-wrote the script with James Bachelor, doesn’t dig deeply into the implications of this plot, and by the end, its logistics don’t entirely hold up to scrutiny. As a famous director once said, though, sometimes these issues are between the viewer and his icebox, and when the production is as sleek, the performances are as attuned, and the melodrama is as skillful as it is in Press Play, those issues matter little in the long run. One just knows when a movie works, and here is one that does.
The premise is that Laura (Clara Rugaard) comes into possession of a cassette tape that, when inserted into a player, transports her backward in time. Each song carries with it a reminiscence of her time with Harrison (Lewis Pullman), the charming and impossibly handsome young man to whom Laura is introduced by way of his stepsister and Laura’s friend Chloe (Lyrica Okano). Laura is a painter aspiring to the level of a working professional and already capable of booking showcases at local art galleries. Harrison is slightly less career-oriented, though his father (Matt Walsh) is pushing him to follow in his footsteps with medical school. Soon after the pair strike up a friendship, then a romance, each is accepted into their respective schools.
Before Harrison can achieve any of his dreams – which have more to do with surfing than medicine – he is stolen from this world, from his family, and from Laura in a random car accident. The film’s first act is incredibly strong at defining relationships, establishing characters and introducing us to the strength of the performances, with Rugaard and Pullman’s naturalistic and believable chemistry leading the way. Alongside Christina Chang as the mother of the family, Pullman, Okano and Walsh also build a believable family unit that seems to offset the absence of Laura’s own family (a father who died in her teen years, a mother we never see for reasons unnecessary to the main plot, no siblings).
That makes Harrison’s sudden absence from those around him feel genuine, and it informs the admitted silliness – but also the appreciable sincerity – of what follows. Laura finds the tape, plugs it into the player, and travels back to the point in her life when the song in question held significance. Just to blow through the ethical quandary that immediately arises from this scenario, Laura outright tells Harrison both about the journey she’s on and his ultimate fate, deciding to travel back and forth until she has come up with a solution to preventing his death.
Ignoring the ethical quandary, though, merely extends its effects until they are undeniable and unavoidable, and as with such stories involving existential wish fulfillment, the film plays out as a morality tale, with each of Laura’s actions having some impact on the future she returns to – from Chloe marrying a different man to another death that seems much harder to reverse, whatever else she might be able to change about her circumstances. Rugaard places all of this emotional content on her shoulders and bares it well in a strong performance of both desperation and mounting awareness of her new realities.
Ultimately, of course, Björkman and Bachelor must find the easiest possible solution to all this, and that seems a little disappointing at first; Danny Glover plays the owner of the record store where Harrison is employed and eventually takes on a bigger role that seems a little too calculated to find a place for the acting legend. The surprise, though, is that they still manage to wrap things up on a note of relative ambiguity – if not for the central relationship, then for what it might mean to these two going forward. That and the performances elevate Press Play beyond its manipulative trappings.
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