As a fan of time travel stories and romantic comedies (Someone Great and Crazy Rich Asians are two of the best romantic comedies of our generation and I will die on this hill), Needle in a Timestack sounded like a film tailor made for me. It is based on the short story of the same name by Robert Silverberg and set in a not-too-distant future in which time travel has become a commodity for the uber rich. When the past has been tinkered with and one man suddenly forgets his wife, he journeys back in time to save his marriage. An interesting premise, yes? Too bad writer/director John Ridley wastes our time by turning the short story into a two-hour feature that feels like a lifetime and never manages to figure out what to do with all that time.

The man I mentioned is Nick Mikkelsen (Leslie Odom Jr. of Hamilton fame), an architect married to Janine (Cynthia Erivo, Bad Times at the El Royale). After a recent “time shift,” an apparently common phenomenon that visually appears as a tidal wave that happens whenever someone changes something in the past, the third time in a year, Nick starts to believe someone is intentionally altering his life. The beginning of the film shows Nick and Janine own a dog named Charlie, but after this time shift, Charlie is now a cat. And Nick hates cats. 

Nick believes the perpetrator is his estranged college friend Tommy Hambleton (Orlando Bloom, Pirates of the Caribbean), a rich and successful businessman who also happens to be Janine’s ex-wife, and that Tommy is “jaunting” (time traveling) to make it so Janine stays married to him. Manipulating the past is illegal in this world but apparently it’s something that isn’t really enforced nor followed? I don’t know, the film never really makes this clear. But after another time shift, Nick and Janine are no longer together. She’s now married to Tommy and Nick is with his former flame, Alex Leslie (Freida Pinto, Slumdog Millionaire).

The success of time travel stories are dependent on how much suspension of disbelief you’re willing to provide. Getting too caught up in the mechanics of time travel and inevitable paradoxes can weigh a story down, which is why films like Looper and Avengers: Endgame succeeded—by playing down the rules and simply telling an engaging story. The problem with Needle in a Timestack is that it somehow spends too much time and too little time explaining the rules of time travel in their world. The film takes its sweet time to drop words like “time shift” and “jaunting,” explain their meaning, and mention how time travel is a commodity mostly reserved for the rich because it’s so expensive. But it also doesn’t bother to explain why time shifts have become so normalized that the government doesn’t bother to care that rich people can essentially go back in time whenever they want and alter history. Or maybe that’s the most realistic aspect of the film, considering how our government today can’t even reign in on the dangers of Facebook and its threat on democracy. I digress. When the most recent time shift occurs, somehow Nick is still able to remember his marriage to Janine, while all is normal to everyone else. As time progresses, Nick starts to forget Janine. But why is it that he was able to remember his marriage right after the time shift, but Janine couldn’t?

Needle in a Timestack also spends 70% of its running time—nearly an hour and a half (I checked)—before we actually get Nick traveling back in time to turn things around. Normally this would be fine had the film used the time wisely to properly set up the world and develop its characters, but the script from John Ridley, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of 12 Years a Slave, is surprisingly awful. We’re beaten constantly in the head by a line Janine says at the beginning of the film, “Love is a circle.” The metaphor is unclear. The line “Have we really thought through the cause and effect of our choices,” taken from one of Nick’s business meetings, is also repeated multiple times throughout the film. It’s not subtle at all.

There’s too much time dedicated to Zoe (Jadyn Wong, Scorpion), Nick’s sister, and her friendship with Sibila (Laysla De Oliveira, Locke & Key) for no reason at all; Zoe speaks English but Sibila only speaks Portuguese, yet somehow they’re best friends. Maybe it’s supposed to be a message that love can be unspoken or transcend language or something like that. Again, I’m not sure because the themes are so paper-thin.

It’s a shame that with so much talent involved, they’re all wasted. Erivo and Pinto are largely relegated to the background in service of Nick’s journey. We’re told Nick and Janine are happily married, but their scenes together are mostly of them fighting. Nick and Alex’s marriage in the new timeline is also damaged, as Nick has a feeling something isn’t right, that they’re not meant to be married. In all of the marriages in the film (Nick and Janine, Nick and Alex, Tommy and Janine, Tommy and Alex), with so many attractive stars, there’s somehow no chemistry detected. This, alongside the film’s soulless and sanitized production design, magnifies the cold and emotionless “romance” part of this love story.

Ultimately, Needle in a Timestack is a total bore and waste of time. Somewhere inside is an interesting story worth telling. The main marital issue Nick and Janine had was with Nick’s paranoia that someone is trying to ruin his marriage. Centering the film on Nick’s obsession that ends up damaging his marriage, while remaining in a world where jaunting is possible, could’ve been a captivating story. A psychological thriller, perhaps. Pretty much any other alternative would be ideal to the film we got—a melodramatic sci-fi romantic drama that’s neither a great time travel nor great romance story.

One out of four Kents.

‘Needle in a Timestack’ is now playing in limited theatres and also available Video on Demand. The film will be released on home video on October 19, 2021.