Timer (film)

TiMER
Promotional poster
Directed by	Jac Schaeffer
Written by	Jac Schaeffer
Produced by	Jennifer Glynn Rikki Jarrett Jac Schaeffer
Starring	Emma Caulfield Michelle Borth John Patrick Amedori Desmond Harrington JoBeth Williams Kali Rocha
Cinematography	Harris Charalambous
Edited by	Peter Samet
Music by	Andrew Kaiser
Production company	Truckbeef
Distributed by	Present Pictures Capewatch Pictures
Release date	May 14, 2010 (2010-05-14)
Running time	99 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English

TiMER is a 2009 science-fiction romantic comedy film by Jac Schaeffer about a device that counts down to the moment you meet your soul mate.

Plot

TiMER is a corporation specializing in a unique matchmaking device. For a nominal monthly fee, after completing a personality questionnaire and a short installation procedure, the company can equip anyone with a countdown timer that tracks the days, months, hours, and minutes until the customer is brought into contact with his or her soul mate. The night before meeting a soul mate, the TiMER reaches zero, and the following day will begin to beep when the soul mates meet. After more than fifteen years of operation, the company has a nearly unprecedented 98% approval rating, only losing ground to the small 2% of dissatisfied customers who either will have to wait a long time to meet their soul mate or do not initially like him or her when they do. Even in these cases, the company provides informational packets about difficult starts, such as opposites attracting or enemies becoming friends, for those customers who express disbelief or shock about their soul mate.

Oona (Emma Caulfield) is a unique situation--her timer is blank. This suggests that either her soul mate has not had a timer installed or that he simply does not exist; Oona fears the latter because there are very few people who have not had TiMERs installed. Unwilling to remain in the lurch, Oona seeks after men who have not had a timer installed, dates them, and then brings them to TiMER to have one installed. In the case that two people who are soul mates have already met before having a timer installed, upon installation of the second, they will both begin to beep simultaneously. Oona brings her latest boyfriend, Brian, to TiMER in the hope that they will get a matching beep, but, as before, his TiMER lights up, indicating that he will meet his soul mate in two years, whereas Oona's remains blank.

Oona resumes her work as an Orthodontist, but begins to express doubt in the effectiveness of the TiMER due to the influence of her roommate and step-sister, Steph, who will not meet her soul mate until she is 43, and because of a Grocery clerk, Mikey (John Patrick Amedori) who encourages her to live in the present rather than stress about the future. Steph consoles herself with the long wait by finding men in similar predicaments and offering to sleep with them, anonymously, much to Oona's (and the rest of their family's) chagrin. Despite their mutual disappointments, Oona and Steph arrive at their parent's house to witness their younger brother's implant, as he has now begun his first day of school in ninth grade. To everyone's surprise, they discover that he is merely three days away from meeting his soul mate.

Despondent, Oona returns to the grocery store and asks Mikey out on an impromptu date. They go back to his apartment, but Oona feels anxious and calls it off. He later meets her at her office (posing as a patient) and reiterates his desire to "take a detour" on the journey of life with her. Though his free-spirit mentality clashes with hers, she decides that he may be right and decides to see him regularly, despite her reservations that he may be "cheating" on a girl he hasn't met yet. After seeing his band perform, the two begin a tryst.

Steph, meanwhile, continues to vent her frustrations at work in a retirement home for ill patients, finding solace only in an elderly gentleman, Dutch, who shares her crass sense of humor. When Dutch's grandson, Dan, comes for a visit, Steph is initially attracted to him, until she realizes that he doesn't have a timer. Later, when Steph sees Oona after her date with Mikey, she tries to discourage her from seeming him again as their "mismatched" timers are a recipe for disaster.

Oona's brother, Jesse, on the other hand, spends a torturous day at school waiting for his timer to beep. Despite the encouragement of his parents, he is both disinterested in meeting his soul mate so soon and finds the anxiety nearly unbearable. Steph finds ways to tease him through the process by changing his ringtone to match the timer, then texting him periodically throughout the day with the message "two for flinching," which he does every time. After spending the entire day at school, he comes home, slightly relieved but disappointed that he is still in the lurch. As the family arrive at home, they say good bye to their mom's new housekeeper, only to discover that her daughter, Soledad, is Jesse's soul mate when their timer's go off in synch--with both families unsure of how to react. As Soledad's family leaves for her Quinceañera (a coming-of-age party for fifteen-year-olds), Jesse's mother chaffs under the immediate culture clash. While she believes the party is a "moot point," her children ask her to let them leave, politely. It is implied, but not stated, that Soledad's parents organized the party to coincide with this date precisely because they expected her to meet her soul mate there--not at their employer's house. Soledad and Jesse do little more than say hello because they are overwhelmed by the experience.

Oona continues to date Mikey and the two open up about their respective philosophies when it comes to the timer; she argues that knowing might be more productive than not knowing only because it may make people more productive in the meantime while Mikey casually defends that fate is more than a single journey--it is a compilation of moments. As Oona and Mikey's relationship develops, Steph finds herself continually getting into trouble at work with her boss, though Dan comes and saves her job by taking the blame for her negligence. She thanks him by asking him to come to the bar where she works her second job, presumably for a date, but this is instead a pretense for meeting Oona since Dan does not have a timer either. When Oona doesn't show, Steph and Dan strike up a conversation where he reveals that he's figured out the date was a set up. As they talk, Dan reveals that he was once married and is now a widower; even without a timer, he believes that his wife, who died three years earlier, was his "one." Steph opens herself up and tells him the total truth: by night she works at a bar to pick up men and by day she works at a seniors' home because they don't have timers. Having made a connection, Steph returns to berate Oona for standing her up--especially because Dan turned out to be so cool--but finds her just after being with Mikey.

As the two fight about the ethics of sleeping with someone with a timer, especially one so close to counting down to zero, Mikey reveals that his timer is a fake. Hurt by the news, Oona kicks Mikey out. After several months pass, Oona reconsiders and asks Mikey to join her for Thanksgiving at her family's house. There, Oona brings him up to speed about her family, including the efforts that they're making to ease Jesse and Soledad's transition by inviting her family over as well. Mikey does fine at first, impressing Soledad's family with a few phrases in Spanish and impressing Oona's family when they realize that his band is moderately famous. However, when he mentions that he does not believe in timers, the conversation turns awkward, but only for a moment until Soledad's mother offers him some food--revealing that she is also skeptical about timers.

For a time, both couples continue to grow in trust, prompting Oona to talk to her mother about her reservations for Mikey. Oona's mother confesses that she has doubts about him too, but that she only wants what's best for her, and she sincerely believes a timer is the best way to avoid the mistakes she made with Oona's father.

When Oona's doubts reach her limit, she confronts Mikey about getting a timer. Unconvinced by her fears and professing his love, he finishes by stating that Oona's problem is not that he cannot give her a guarantee, it is that she cannot offer him one. Unsure of what to do next, Oona and Steph visit Oona's father, a famous music producer, under the pretext of showing him some of Mikey's music. While there, they learn that Oona's father actually did get a timer at his ex-wife's insistence, and is still counting down. He is, however, now with a young woman who had her timer removed. Realizing that they can have the timers removed and give up on a predestined fate, the girls head back to TiMER to have their timers removed, which they find is a more painful and involved procedure than having it installed. Steph has hers removed, but when Oona sits down, the technicians issue a final warning: once removed, an individual cannot have a new one installed. Oona decides to have it removed anyway, but at the last second, it kicks to life with only five hours left on it. She discovers that she is less than a day away from meeting her soul mate.

Faced with the possibilities for the first time, she decides to keep the timer a little while longer. However, she cannot bring herself to leave her house that day and simply lets it pass.

That evening, her family begins to celebrate a joint birthday party for Steph and Oona, though Oona does not show up. Dan arrives with flowers for Steph and proceeds to mingle with the crowd. Jesse and Soledad speak together, and Jesse communicates to her that he's willing to wait for her to grow into the idea of being together, while she is impressed that he learned Spanish to do this. Mikey translates a conversation with Soledad's mother and Marion in a separate room, where the two mothers state that they would have been happier if Jesse and Soledad had met, fallen in love, and then introduced the two families to one another. Marion reluctantly agrees that the old fashioned tradition of being forced together by children in love would have spared them both a lot of discomfort. The two agree to keep their old roles as boss and housekeeper for th time being.

Oona arrives late to the party, having finally decided to give the day a try. When she arrives at the party, she looks around and sees Mikey, but is interrupted before making eye contact and escorted into the main room. As she is introduced to Dan, her timer goes off as does Dan's. Steph, shocked, asks Dan what is going on. He confesses that he finally buckled the day before and had a timer installed, and the mutual ringing of Oona's and Dan's timers confirm that they are soul mates. Despite having tried to recruit Dan for just this purpose, Steph is hurt and conflicted about the news--as is Mikey who storms out of the party.

Though she cannot catch him, Oona goes back to the house to try and sort out the new complications with both Dan and Steph. Steph is taking the news hard, and tries to blow off the incident as something that will save her time getting over the pain of a breakup with Dan. Oona tries to console her, but it backfires when Steph reveals that she always thought their timers brought them closer together. As the two begin to argue, they ask Dan to give them some time alone. Before he departs, Dan mentions that it was being with Steph that made him get the timer because he did not want to be alone any longer. Magnanimously, he suggests that the upside to the news is that he now knows, for certain, that Steph will be a part of his life for good.

Oona finds Mikey the following day to sort things out, but they both realize that they were not in love, they just enjoyed not worrying about the future together. Mikey is heartbroken, though he does his best to express his best wishes for Oona's future. Unable to keep to her old schedule, Oona is woken up the following day by a returned Steph, who reminds her that she's missed her daily run at a local track. When she arrives, she finds that Dan, a track coach, has been there almost every day--he just has his track team run a little later during the day. She apologizes for being rude, and he, in turn, suggests that she get a late start more often, implying that he would like to see her again. They confess that they were both overwhelmed at the news, but they casually go back to their routines while hinting that they will see each other again soon.

Cast

• Emma Caulfield as Oona
• Michelle Borth as Steph
• John Patrick Amedori as Mikey
• Desmond Harrington as Dan the Man
• JoBeth Williams as Marion
• Kali Rocha as Matchmaker Patty

Reception

The film received a 63% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes, based on 8 reviews.

External links

• Official website
• TiMER at IMDb
• TiMER at AllMovie
• TiMER at Rotten Tomatoes