Stream or skip: Time-travel drama 'One More Time' on Netflix
One More Time is the latest addition to Netflix's humungous catalog of young adult dramas. Only this time, there's a dash of time travel thrown in, too. Directed by Jonatan Etzler, the film is about allowing multiple chances to its protagonist and testing how scenarios play out differently when she's stuck in a time loop. Interesting idea, but it fails to work on screen.
This is the story of the drama
The film is centered around Amelia, a middle-aged woman who is not doing great in life and has hit a midlife crisis. On her 40th birthday, she finds herself transported to her teenage years and is stuck in a time loop, where she relives her 18th birthday again and again. The drama follows her endeavors to break out of this loop.
Run-of-the-mill drama with no new aspects
From start to finish, the movie is a run-of-the-mill teenage drama, and one has to look really hard to find traces of inventiveness and ingenuity here. The first 15 minutes, in particular, are a royal bore, and I had to pause the film several times and then re-play it, hoping each time that it would somehow get better. Sadly, it didn't.
Similar to other time-travel projects, but where's fun?
The protagonist is supposed to be confused about the torturous time loop, but for the better part of the film, she looks less bewildered and more melancholic. It's almost as if she would be better off sleeping than being in this film! One More Time is heavily redolent of 13 Going On 30 and Back to 15 but minus all the fun and vitality.
'Emotional' parts fail to connect with us
There are some seemingly emotional parts in the movie, but they are tonsured clean of any gravitas. So, naturally, they evoke zero emotions. For instance, Amelia's boyfriend, Max, chickens out and dumps her on her birthday when she talks about "settling down" with him and having kids sometime in the future. This is nothing we haven't already seen in global cinema before.
Everything rests on wafer-thin plot
The plot of the 1:25-hour-long movie is so wafer-thin and flimsy that it could have simply been wrapped up in an hour only. At one point, Amelia is called self-centered, but we don't see any instance that can corroborate that, so it is tough to agree with the speaker. The characters aren't fleshed out well, and the movie lacks the much-needed engagement factor.
We don't suggest watching 'One More Time'
My only positive takeaway from One More Time was its message: Even the best days of life come with a shelf life, and whether we like it or not, change is the only constant. Other than this theme, there is nothing that will keep you invested in the drama, so I'd recommend you skip it. One More Time? More like "not even one time."
