We Live in Time

Grade: C+

We just hit the 25 year anniversary of The Story of Us (the Bruce Willis/Michelle Pfeiffer marriage-on-the-rocks dramedy). I saw its trailer several times, leading up to its release in the fall of 1999. In it, there is a series of quick clips that I assumed were cherry-picked from whole scenes and merged together for the preview. But no, it actually appears in the movie the exact same way. I quite enjoyed The Story of Us. I wasn’t upset by this discovery; it was just interesting.

We Live in Time is often like a trailer stretched out to feature length. You could call it We Live Out of Time, as the chronology jumps around. It takes place in a period of 10 years. We can keep track of WHEN it is because of how somebody’s hair looks, or whether or not they’re wearing glasses. The two stars, lovable as they are, are put through the usual tearjerker/romantic comedy steps, with little freshness or originality. There’s a Meet Cute, a proposal, arguments about children and work/life balance, a flashback montage of happier times on a merry-go-round, a public apology that is allowed to continue and continue, a cancer diagnosis, and a death. All the boxes are systematically checked off.

Andrew Garfield plays Tobias. He works for a popular UK breakfast cereal company, and is apparently pretty high in the totem pole, because he’s constantly recognized as Mr. Weetabix, and is asked “do you get free Weetabix?” This, of course, isn’t the first scene, but one of the first events: he’s in a hotel room, preparing to sign papers to end his marriage. The pen in the room is out of ink. I don’t know if his clothes were in the laundry, but for some reason, he ventures out in a bathrobe to the nearest drug store to get some pens. On his way back, he’s hit by a car while crossing the street. 

The driver is Almut (Florence Pugh). She used to be a figure skater, and is now a chef at a fine dining restaurant. She has her eye on some prestigious cooking competitions. Over the course of a decade, they get together, have a daughter who we meet after – or maybe before – a montage of multiple negative pregnancy tests before finally landing on a positive one, and life happens. Pugh and Garfield look great and infuse as much personality as possible. If it sounds like I told you the whole movie, we pretty much get all that from the trailer anyway.

I think I missed a Puss in Boots sequel, but other than that, I have seen all of Florence Pugh’s films since Midsommar. It’s a tradition that I keep up. Double Oscar nominee Andrew Garfield was my pick for Best Actor for tick, tick… BOOM! – and Hacksaw Ridge, his other nod, was as great a war movie as I’ve ever seen. I’m glad these actors live in our time, but this particular experience is bland and routine. The scenes are so short that anytime a momentum is about to be established, we’re thrust into another thing, and therefore kept at such arm’s length from gleaning anything meaningful. I can’t recommend We Live in Time. It’s tear-jerky, laugh-jerky, and herky-jerky.

Grade: C+