TiMER

            Let me warn you now, this is a strange film.  As I watched the first few minutes, I seriously questioned what I had gotten into.  I kept wondering this as I got more and more wrapped up in the story until I hardly thought about it at all.  The film remained strange all the way through.  That did not change.  What did was the story, and that was what made this film worth following all the way to the end. 

                 A new invention has been created called a TiMER.  It is a device that gets implanted on your wrist and will let you know how many days it will take for you to meet your soul mate.  The time counts down to the night before you are supposed to meet that special someone.  At midnight the clock will reach zero, signifying that you will meet your soul mate the very next day.  When you come in close contact with this person, both TiMERs will make a sound to let everyone know the soul mates have met.  Then everyone lives happily ever after.

                At least that is how it’s supposed to work.  There are a few hitches to this system, one of them being that both people in this pairing have to have a TiMER in order for either one to work.  If one doesn’t, the person who does have a TiMER will not have any sort of clock reading until the other person gets one.  This is the situation Oona (Emma Caulfield) finds herself in.  She has had a TiMER for years and it has never had a reading.  Nearing her thirtieth birthday, Oona is starting to worry she will never find her soul mate.  In order to try and find him, Oona dates men who don’t have a TiMER, and then drags them into the store to see if they are a match.  Each time Oona finds out the man she is with is not the one for her.  To make matters worse, her ninth-grade brother gets a TiMER and discovers he will find his match in a matter of three days.  Now Oona is truly the only one without a soul mate.

              Feeling sad and alone, Oona decides it is time for her to take her step-sister’s advice.  Steph (Michelle Borth) has a TiMER with an active countdown, but she is not scheduled to meet her soul mate for over 10 years.  Instead of waiting around for him, Steph continues to date around and have a good time.  She wants Oona to do the same, but for a very long time Oona refused.  That is why when Steph finds out Oona is seeing someone she is so surprised.  When she finds out who the man is, the surprise becomes even bigger.

                The person Oona is dating is Mikey (John Patrick Amedori), a grocery store clerk in his early twenties.  He hit on Oona when she was in his grocery line one day.  Desperate to find anyone she has a connection with, Oona goes back to the grocery store and grabs Mikey.  His TiMER says he’s supposed to meet his soul mate in four months so Oona doesn’t expect anything to get serious.  It’s just the kind of relationship Steph told her to find.

                Except the relationship does get serious.  Despite their age difference, Oona and Mikey have a great time with each other.  Feelings grow, but they get complicated by the TiMERs.  Oona’s still hasn’t started and Mikey’s is winding down.  When Oona started this relationship, she expected it to be just the temporary sort she was looking for.  After she finds out that may not be the case, Oona is forced to examine what her true feelings for Mikey are and whether or not her TiMER should play a factor in her decisions.

                As I said, this is a strange film, but it is cute as well.  Some of the characters did get to be a little much at times.  Steph was definitely one of those characters, but along with that, I felt sorry for her.  She has so long to wait before meeting her soul mate.  That’s why when she starts to fall for this great guy it’s kind of hard to watch.  He does not have a TiMER, meaning he cannot be her soul mate, but she’s so happy with him, that it puts the whole TiMER system into question.  Should she go with what the TiMER says, or follow her heart? 

              That question is actually, in my opinion, the point behind the whole movie. Would you want to know when you were going to find your soul mate, or wait and do it on your own? A TiMER device would certainly take the guesswork out of things. It would also eliminate the thrill of discovery. The choice would be gone as well. That lack of choice is what would lead me to not get one of these devices. There are other reasons I would not get one as well, but that would be the biggest reason. I, as probably do most people, want to have a say in who is involved in my life, no matter what the relationship is. That is not something I want determined by a machine.