Andrew Stanton won Best Animated Feature Oscars for Pixar’s “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E”. He then shifted to live-action as director of Disney’s action/adventure “John Carter”, which didn’t live up to The Mouse House’s critical and box office expectations. Stanton returned to animation with 2016 blockbuster “Finding Dory” and is also helming the highly-anticipated “Toy Story 5”, which opens this June.
But before then, we finally get his long-awaited drama “In the Blink of an Eye”. It was filmed back in 2023, with an unclear release plan until just a couple months ago. “Blink”, from Searchlight Pictures, screened at the Sundance Film Festival but was then given a straight to Hulu debut. That decision had me a little concerned but still hopeful for something interesting and unique. Unfortunately neither adjective truly applies here.
There are three stories from three different time periods, involving a Paleolithic family in 45,000 BCE, an anthropologist graduate student (played by Rashida Jones) and her boyfriend (Daveed Diggs) in 2025, and a scientist (Kate McKinnon) on an important mission in the year 2417. All three have a common theme: illness. People, plants and the planet are dying. Stanton connects them all, often with transitions, in rather obvious and heavy-handed ways. Over the course of the movie, things happen in exactly the way the title suggests. The big ‘revelation’: We must change and adapt. That concept isn’t new, and neither is any of the commentary — on time, life and humanity. And though I usually like Thomas Newman’s music, the score didn’t gel this time.
I give Stanton a few points for not making “In the Blink of an Eye” an overblown, elongated experience. It’s only an hour and a half. And there were attempts at something dynamic in the time progressions of the final act, though that section, like the rest of the film, comes up short.
LCJ GRADE: C-
Running Time: 94 min.