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11 Minutes Ago

★★★★☆

Directed by: Bob Gebert

Written by: Bob Gebert

Initially, 11 Minutes Ago seems like some low-budget science fiction mindbender, a la Primer. But rest assured that this is not some nerd-heavy speculative wank-fest and it is, in fact, a romance. The science here is easily dealt with via a few key contrivances: The mechanic of time travel conveniently necessitates the dark (so the light can be turned off, saving on effects budgets); certain core science entanglements are glossed over for the sake of the larger plot; and much of the conceits necessary for dramatic tension are never explained (the third hop, for example, where Pack says, “something happened here, and things changed” is left intentionally or necessarily vague).

This is all fine though because 11 Minutes Ago isn’t really about time travel, it’s about time itself, and the fleeting nature of creating memories. The movie is structured in a kind of Memento-esque time-hopping format which is actually linear as pertains to Pack (played with talented amateur capability by Ian Michaels), who begins the movie late in the chronological flow and then begins to experience the events of the film’s run (which, in their re-constructed state are more or less real-time) sort of backward. It would be something of a spoiler to explain why he does this, and to a certain degree one of the film’s logical flaws is why Pack locks himself into a timeline he cannot possibly understand just based on the early tumbles back in time. Why not, for example, target his third or fourth visit to an hour or two earlier than the wedding? Eventually it becomes clear why he stays with the formula, but early on you just have to kind of accept that he’s adhering to his own timeline just for the curiosity of it. I found that to be a little bit of a stretch, but eventually the narrative catches up to the concession and it becomes clear why Pack is so interested in maintaining the state of the continuum.

At its core, 11 Minutes Ago is the kind of romantic movie that works because it doesn’t rely on the typical contrivances. RomComs are often derided because they create a kind of canonical fairytale world where things work a certain way because that’s how RomComs work. I believe it is that self-referential nature that turns off so many people who dislike the formula on the face of it. This film could easily have been a romantic comedy, but instead the romance is played straight, replacing silly sight gags with earnestness and sentimentality that mostly works. Here’s the main problem with 11 Minutes Ago, and the thing that keeps it from being truly great: The writing, which is to say the dialogue, shows too many seams. There are a lot of speechifying moments that I’m sure looked great on the page but in a film that is supposed to be cinematic reality TV, they come across as very forced, and very rehearsed. It’s not that the lines don’t work, it’s that they break the illusion because they sound like something someone wrote as opposed to something someone would come up with off the cuff, and that hurts the tone the film is trying to convey.

I did find myself liking 11 Minutes Ago quite a bit. Romances are usually not my bag but this is the kind of romance that people like me can find themselves cheering for. It’s unique, original and has something to say beyond trite “love conquers all” obviousness. It’s not quite perfect, but it’s an achievement and sometimes that’s enough.

from No Thief Like a Bad Movie — December 26, 2011 at 11:57PM