Time
The Hubby and I watched a movie last night (no, that’s not a major news flash!). We had thought about seeing it when it came out, but like so many movies, we decided for it to come out on cable instead of plunking out the cash. The title of this cinematic endeavor? In Time. Starring Justin Timberlake.
Now, say what you want about his singing (I’m sure I like some of his stuff, but I’m not a Timberlake fanatic), but he’s pretty interesting to watch on-screen. I do have to say my most favorite place to watch him is Saturday Night Live. He and Jimmy Fallon do a great Bee Gees skit (it has me laughing even as I think about it, much less watch it. Note to self – find on YouTube and watch today during one of my “breaks.”).
But this was a pretty good movie. The basic premise is that we are engineered to live until age 26. At age 25, your counter lights up, notifying you of every second you have left to live. Time becomes the method of exchange. No one wants to work for money; they work for more time. And, as you can guess, the rich get richer and the poor, well, they get dead.
I don’t want to give too much away – after all, you are going to run out and watch it now that I’ve given it such a glowing review, right? But it brings up some interesting points. Justin Timberlake’s character has almost always been so broke that he’s only had one day to live, but somehow he’s lived three years on that one day, finding ways to make ends meet and getting just a little more time to live. When he is asked: “What have we got?” he says: “A day. You can do a lot in a day.” And the girl he meets is rich but unhappy: “Do I really want to spend my life trying not to die by mistake?”
And how weird it would be to see how much time you had left, down to the second. I’m almost sure I don’t want to know that much about my death – I think I’d be thinking about it so much I would pay attention to what’s in front of me. I have enough distractions already without having the biggest one of all staring me in the face.
It reminds me of the other movie about time we watched sometime in the last six months or so, Timer. When implanted in a person’s wrist, a TiMER counts down to the day the wearer finds true love. But Oona O’Leary faces the rare dilemma of a blank TiMER. Her soul mate – whoever and wherever he is – has yet to have a TiMER implanted. Staring down the barrel of thirty and tired of waiting for her would-be life partner to get off the dime, Oona breaks her own rules and falls for Mikey, a charming and inappropriately young supermarket clerk with a countdown of four months. (stolen borrowed from imdb.com) This was a pretty good movie, too.
Now, it’s time for me to get motivated. I have a book to finish and send on its way to the author, and two more on my plate for this week. Although I just realized the dental cleaning I thought was today is really for next week (yay!), so I’ve got that going for me!