What if such a gadget existed? Perhaps a device that is capable of eliminating the present by reversing time. Didn’t know the material for a test? Go back in time and retake the test! Remember that awkward date and wish you could push the reset button and start over? Not a problem!
Unfortunately, it is foremost, not many of us have the opportunity to influence the present, combining two very important aspects of the events. Almost all of us cannot allow one event of the past to determine the current situation. If you disagree, drop us a comment with an explanation. But if we talk about this in terms of movies, it is completely different! If anything can happen, then so can Time travel.
The time traveling storyline is not new to The Present, the newest movie in town. It had its theatrical release in a few countries, and now has been made available for streaming on Netflix in the UK, which is convenient for anyone with a subscription to the service, as now the movie can be viewed in the comfort of their homes.
However, is it worth watching The Present? Or rather will you sit through the credits thinking about how you would love for the last few hours to be completely blacked out? As you can see from the review score, we fell on the side of the latter.
The film directed by Christian Ditter (How to Be Single), revolves around Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear’s portrayal of a couple going through a divorce. This cannot be good for their children, Taylor (Easton Rocket Sweda), Emma (Shay Rudolph), and Max (Mason Shea Joyce) who naturally do not wish to see their parents’ union dissolved.
Certainly, there is nothing better for children than the recently received grandfather clock. This is a family heirloom, but for some unknown reason, the hands can be turned backwards, meaning that time could be reversed; this is what the youngest child in the family, Taylor, learns.
The first half drags in because it is Taylor who is the bearer of the knowledge of the clock and its unusual powers. He is stuck at the same point in time where he seeks to make his parents avoid actions that have a high risk of making them take up, such as the event when he prevents his mother from becoming more intimately involved with the male acquaintance she works with.
In the second half of the film, Taylor informs his siblings about the clock and together, they form a bond that works towards saving their parents from going through a wrenching separation.
When does a family movie stop being a family movie?
The Present is marketed towards families with children and is about some kids coming together to preserve their family unit. The plot is something that we have probably watched in some old Nickelodeon or Disney movies with the additional twist that one of the kids, Taylor, is mute and does not like being touched. He probably has some form of autism, but the film does not explain his behavior in any detail.
Even though the movie aims at a child audience, the film has a few shots which are inappropriate for the younger audience. One of the characters, a young boy’s mother, is shown in a scene allowing her gaze to wander and stare at a man’s chest, for instance. Another primary character in the movie, Emma, has to kiss her school friend who tells her “he is subsidizing for a kind of activity”, showing her his pack of condoms. Young teens parents might not have any reservations about these clips, but those with kids below the age of 12 might have some cause to be uneasy.
While The Present is undeniably a good action flick, family audiences might not enjoy the film for several reasons, one of which being the sexual connotations present throughout the film. There’s also a scene in which one of the parents is talking about his marriage to some consenting body, I think it was trust issues or something around those lines. This wouldn’t be a problem if this was just a rom-com film, but cos it’s a kid’s movie, I was shocked to know the writer focused so much on these scenes instead of the important ones that concern the target audience.
Even if it’s only hypothetical, if I had that opportunity, I’d send an email to the people who made this film and sigh in agony whilst informing them to beware of the copyright council. Tell them to stop right when they are about to produce the add-on that saw no originality or purpose whatsoever.
These are some examples of what I would do to such producers or directors: if they don’t want to be completely ignorant of their audience, they should be alerted about some materials that are inappropriate for children. And I would want to discuss with Greg Kinnear and Isla Fisher about how the two of them should not sign a contract that would be inappropriate for them.
These are the things I would do, and again I would return to watch the film. In case I still discovered some flaws, I would travel back in time and remove the film from the watch list on Netflix.
That said, the film is not all that terrible. Family bonding is nice and so is the script which is not overly sweet and emotional as it could have been. But in an overall sense, it’s over an hour long, generous cast gets to say a lot of bland words and act poor wishful thinking stories for the kids who are perhaps undergoing their parents getting divorced.
If ‘The Present’ ignores all realistic nuances and prefers to depict a utopia, then the younger audience would have been more suitable: ‘Time cannot be rewound, our mistakes or those committed by other people. But there’s plenty of scope to move ahead in life and make a better future using the memories.’ This would have been a much truer and realistic conclusion for The Present than the one that senselessly ends the story.
It’s painfully obvious, I’m afraid, that The Present is not a good movie. It drowns in the same old patterns and fails to create any magic inspired by other masterpieces. It is tolerable, so long as one does not ponder about it later. But then again, if you are anything like the author, you will regret watching a movie that offers no respect to the viewers and wasted so much of your time.
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