Review in the Blink of an Eye – Pixar director’s long-awaited sci-fi epic falls apart | film

IIn the first few minutes of In the Blink of an Eye, director Andrew Stanton’s long, sprawling sci-fi epic, a Neanderthal man (Jorge Vargas) explores a perilous rocky beach 45,000 years ago. For some reason, he decided to climb one of the larger, steeper rocks – for food? To get a point? But he lost his grip and fell backwards, landing on the sharp stones below with a sickeningly deep crush.

I think that moment is supposed to convey the fragility of early human existence – one second searching for food, the next impaled and/or vulnerable – although I can’t help but think of the film’s cursed journey. Filmed in 2023, in the blink of an eye, it’s now arriving on Hulu nearly three years later after numerous delays — something that’s almost unheard of in the relatively icy world of film production, though never a good sign, especially considering that Stanton is the creative force behind such emotional juggernauts as Wall-E and Finding Nemo (as well as many other Pixar films, plus John Carter). The lengthy timeline suggests it will either be a challenging and ambitious affair, an arduous journey through space and time, or, more likely, complete chaos.

Unfortunately, this strangely intertwined tale of a long past, present, and ironic future fizzles out just as the Neanderthal’s picnic on the beach did. Written by Colby Day, In the Blink of an Eye attempts nothing less than the sweep of life from the Big Bang to the unknown green planets, with the emotional depth of a tidal pool and the complexity of a cave painting. The only sparks here are the literal sparks struck by the Neanderthal family with flint, which we encounter with a Sylvia Plath quote: “Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now.”

With a little more self-seriousness, we might have been able to make it to camp. It’s unintentionally comical, for example, that the prosthetics and museum displays of the designs of the prehistoric family — Thorn (Vargas), Hera (Tanaya Beatty), and Lark (Skywalker Hughes), whose names are introduced via a title card, because their language is incomprehensible to us — recall the language of the caveman Gekko. It’s almost funny that in the present timeline, anthropology professor Claire (Rashida Jones) justifies her academic research into Neanderthal remains to her mother, in a phone call riddled with continuity errors, as “kind of a big deal,” because “like, I could publish a paper.” Cut to Saturday Night Live veteran Kate McKinnon as a “long-lived” mission-oriented pilot sent to colonize a distant planet in a distant future with nothing but an AI companion (also voiced by Jones). Well, you’ve almost got comedy.

This does not mean that in the blink of an eye funnyIn and of itself, though I laughed out loud when McKinnon, Mr. Idiot who was once abducted by aliens (at least, in a sitcom), ran her finger over a literal table of contents in a paper instruction manual labeled “Settlement Preparations” with a straight face. Indeed, for all its bewildering twists, blunt statements (“Antivirals don’t work!”) and outlandish ideas (like babies hatching in spaceship drawers), In the Blink of an Eye remains tediously dull — too weak, uninspired, and barren to conjure any of the wonder required to sustain life, the equivalent of watching paint dry on a cave wall.

If you’re still unclear on what this 94-minute film is about, you’re not alone. It’s difficult to describe a common narrative thread, because there isn’t really one besides the basic motivators of love, companionship, and survival, somehow stripped of anything earthy. Humans and Neanderthals get sick, solve problems, and do the best they can in difficult situations. They form relationships, as Claire does with statistics professor Greg (Daveed Diggs, who makes the vacancy gamely sexy), with nothing in common other than a one-night stand (I have to imagine several scenes were cut). They endure, which in the show feels more like a History Channel parody than a sci-fi epic.

Ironically, it’s the cavemen—further removed in time, language, and significance to everyone else—that come closest to indicating the dread that the film strives to conjure in its ludicrously fast-paced, techno-optimistic ending. Halloween costume-like fur dresses aside, there is something thrillingly compelling in the brutal simplicity of this chapter, its simple fantasy of primitive survival. I have no idea, like anyone else, how Neanderthals and humans coexisted, what it was like to hear a bone flute for the first time, what life was like with so little understanding of what was out there. I can imagine an overwhelming feeling of amazement, but that’s for a different movie.