THE STORY – Three storylines, spanning thousands of years, intersect and reflect on hope, connection, and the circle of life.
THE CAST – Rashida Jones, Daveed Diggs, Kate McKinnon, Jorge Vargas, Tanaya Beatty & Skywalker Hughes
THE TEAM – Andrew Stanton (Director) & Colby Day (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 93 Minutes
There’s something undeniably cool about Andrew Stanton becoming the first Pixar director ever to have a film premiere at Sundance. His career, full of massively successful Oscar-winning hits like “Finding Nemo” and “WALL-E,” hit a snag after his live-action debut with “John Carter,” a notorious flop. That setback didn’t end his live-action career, however. Over the past decade, he has directed episodes of shows like “Stranger Things,” “3 Body Problem,” and “For All Mankind.” It’s no surprise, then, that he returned to features with “In the Blink of an Eye,” a big sci-fi swing meant to zoom out and examine humanity’s bigger picture. While the film’s heart is clearly in the right place, it ultimately lands with a whimper.
Colby Day’s script, which landed on the Black List in 2016, blends three stories across tens of thousands of years that initially seem unconnected, though they eventually find a shared throughline. The first takes place in 45,000 B.C.E., following a Neanderthal family living alone on a beach and simply trying to survive. Their older child helps care for the baby, the mother carries their third child, and the father teaches his daughter how to make fire, hunt, and avoid other people. Though their language is incomprehensible, the story remains easy to follow. They are simply existing, exploring, and discovering.
Flashing forward to the present day, the second story follows Claire, an archaeology student who forms a hesitant connection with Greg. When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, Claire is forced to choose between her family and her life’s work. This storyline is the most fully developed of the three, allowing a sweet, if unremarkable, romance to unfold while science and research remain in the background.
The final story takes place in 2417 and centers on Coakley, a lone astronaut engineered to survive an extended mission to populate a distant planet. When a mysterious parasite threatens the ship’s oxygen supply, she works with the A.I. to save the embryos onboard. The segment recalls films like “The Martian” and “Interstellar,” but without the stakes or intrigue that made those works so compelling.
The biggest challenge of a triptych like this, especially at just 93 minutes, is that each story feels rushed. While the Neanderthal segment does not require much complexity, the present-day and future storylines would have benefited from more time. Without it, they feel incomplete. As the film nears its end, all three narratives jump forward to show what happens next, creating the impression that the filmmakers ran out of time and were forced to compress their conclusions.
The result is a film that feels too light for what it attempts to accomplish. The stories are not developed enough to carry significant emotional weight, yet they contain more plot than the runtime can reasonably support. Stanton’s aim for something lyrical and meditative is clear, with a slow, patient tone meant to unveil deeper meaning. However, with so little actually happening, the film struggles to generate momentum or sustain engagement.
That is not to say there is no value here. Thomas Newman’s score is lovely, mysterious, and deeply human. The performances are mostly strong, and the Jones-Diggs romance is easy to like. Still, the film is shot with such a lack of specificity that it often feels lifeless. At times, it even resembles a feature-length commercial, too generic to leave much of an impression.
The object that ultimately connects these stories is left unspoiled here, but it is so obvious and heavy-handed that it undercuts much of the film’s intended seriousness. This reflects a broader issue with stories spanning centuries and intended to speak across generations: their themes can become painfully on-the-nose. The film never moves beyond familiar ideas about human connection and legacy.
While the filmmakers’ intentions are sincere and rooted in a desire to emphasize shared humanity, the execution falls short of those ambitions. “In the Blink of an Eye” is ultimately a well-meaning, big-hearted sci-fi film that never fully comes together.
