Fix: Light Romantic Comedy
Platform: Netflix
On the recommendation of several readers, I decided to check out TiMER for this week’s Stream It. Thanks, guys! I’ll never look at matchmaking the same way again. Also, I’m super glad I met my husband ten years ago, before online dating was really a thing.
Netflix Summary:
In this comedic fantasy, biotechnological implants count down to the moment one is supposed to meet his or her soul mate.
FYA Summary:
Oona’s just your typical type-A single woman, obsessed with finding true love before her ovaries shrivel up and fall out. Naturally, she couldn’t wait to jump on the TiMER bandwagon, signing away countless thousands of dollars to a private corporation to tag her like a cow and tell her when she’d meet her soulmate. The timer, a little metal tag on a person’s wrist, counts down to the exact second you meet your soulmate, and then beeps when soulmates are in the same place. Unfortunately for Oona, her timer is blank, which messes with her type-A need to control her life. Hijinks ensue when Oona throws caution to the winds and embarks on a fling with the supermarket checkout boy to keep herself entertained until the timer starts working.
Familiar Face:
Emma Caulfield as Oona O’Leary
Anya! It’s Anya, hands down one of my favorite Buffy characters, due to her total bitchiness and absolute incapability of fitting in the human world. Ah, Emma Caulfield, it’s good to see you back. Even though now you’re a kind-hearted orthodontist who takes kids’ braces off a month early so they can start 8th grade without food stuck in their teeth all the time, you’re still kind of an uptight bitch and I love you.
The rest of the cast are mainly one-offs from TV shows, so they might look familiar but unplaceable. Like Michelle Borth, who plays Oona’s cranky BFF/stepsister Steph, whose timer says she won’t meet her soulmate until she’s 50ish. I’ve never seen anything she’s ever been in, except maybe an episode of SVU, but she’s AWESOME and should totally be in everything ever.
Couch-Sharing Capability: Slumber Party or Long-Term Relationship
This is definitely NOT a movie you’d want to watch on a first date, especially someone you met online, unless you want to freak him or her out. The scenes where Oona practically hogties her boyfriends and drags them to get chipped so she can see if they’re soulmates? Yikes. You’ll have your potential squirming and planning an exit. It’s good for getting a bunch of friends together and drinking fancy cocktails and gossiping, though, especially if you have a friend who’s recently in luurrve, and it’d be fun to watch with your one in particular — you could come up with a drinking game and laugh at how silly it is to need technology to tell you you’re soulmates.
Recommended Level of Inebriation: Moderate to High
This is not a serious movie, and the guy Oona fools around with was (for me) totally cringeworthy, so packing a few drinks wouldn’t be a bad idea. The movie’s laughs, which are pretty tame sober, would increase in direct proportion to chemical assistance, though.
Use of Your Streaming Subscription: Totally Appropriate
What’s your Netflix subscription FOR except checking out movies you’d A. never want to own, B. not really want to advertise to the world you’re watching, and C. are mildly curious about? That’s what I thought. TiMER‘s definitely cute and fun and worth a couple of hours, but not worth rental fees/library late fees/or — heaven forbid — the purchase price, and that’s really what Netflix is all about.
