Suppose you’d never age a day beyond your 25th birthday. Then imagine the catch being that your 25th birthday would be your last. What would you do if every second of your life was valuable enough to kill for? The recent release “In Time” ponders these questions but apparently if every second was so crucial, San Francisco moviegoers wouldn’t waste them on this movie.
“The premise was very, very clever and very timely, especially with the Occupy Wall Street movement going on right now. Still, the idea was highly implausible. I mean, it was a neat concept, but the way it was handled wasn’t believable at all. I just couldn’t get with the whole arm wrestling deciding if you got to keep extra time on your life and the time being stamped on your arm. Nice idea, but they could have done way more such a cool concept.” — Elizabeth Overtree, 60
“The premise was really good but also really overdone. The metaphor … they just beat you over the head with it from the start of the movie all the way to the end. It was too much. They could’ve done so much more with the plot, but they just forced the metaphor down your throat the whole time instead. It was just, ‘Time is money, time is money’ the whole time. We get it already. They neglected a lot of other parts of the movie to focus on the ‘time is money’ thing. It was still entertaining, but I’d have to grade this move good, not great.” — Tim Werner, 55
“I didn’t know it was supposed to have anything to do with the Occupy Wall Street movement. None of that was ever really made clear. It makes sense now, but didn’t they film this movie more than six months ago? I don’t think they were trying to connect the two or really support the movement. If they were trying to tie it into that, then they did a mediocre job. I wouldn’t have even made that connection if you hadn’t asked me about it.” — Bill Hollis, 56
“The idea was really cool, but still pretty implausible. The movie wasn’t that good to me. It was visually entertaining and all; and all the action scenes were good and kept me in it, but it was poorly written and the dialogue was so predictable. Cheesy, corny, whatever you wanna call it, it was bad. You could see the turns and actions coming from a mile away. This movie had a real chance to be more than your token sci-fi flick, but it turned into that. I was disappointed that there was never any real big consequences or major event in the movie that the limited lifespans caused. It was just all about the technology, not about good dialogue or good characters at all. And the stealing time with a handshake wasn’t thought out well at all.” — Parker McGinnis, 25
“They could be talking about the Occupy Wall Street thing and all the protests, but they either did a good job hiding it if they were, or just a really bad job trying to push that message. It just never came across clearly to me. I knew it was supposed to be about the whole rich versus poor, and like the whole Robin Hood thing, but I still thought they did a really bad job talking about the wealth disparity. I get what it was supposed to be, and it was entertaining visually, but like Parker said, the idea was really implausible and the message wasn’t clear. It was an alright movie, though; good if you didn’t want anything deep and just cool action.” — Mike Miller, 25
“I don’t know what everyone else was talking about. I thought the movie was really good and that they did a really god job of keeping the idea believable and understandable the whole time. That was the big thing for me: It was understandable. I never felt overwhelmed by the idea and it was never too far-fetched or out there like a lot of science fiction is. The action was good, but the movie was good because the idea made so much sense and could really happen to you. To be honest, it was kind of scary because I really felt like it was something they could really do to us — and not too far in the future.” — Kelsey Williams, 20
“I felt like this move was all style and no substance. When I heard the idea and saw the previews and trailers, I thought this movie was gonna be amazing, but it fell pretty flat. They tried to break your head open with the premise and then stuff it into the hole. It was like listening to a sermon about how time was money for two hours, but never hearing what would happen if you didn’t think time was money. The conflict wasn’t ever really gripping or compelling for me. The main character got all of that extra time, but it was unbelievable that the rich would leave their sterile place just because they were mad he had too much time. The super rich people had so much more time than he had, so why would they even care about this guy living it up? I don’t know, it was cool I guess, but they didn’t do a good job of talking about rich versus poor or the Occupy Wall Street thing.” — Alex Hill, 23
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