Ian Samuels adapts Lev Grossman's time-loop teen romance in an Amazon film starring Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton.
The time-loop genre is old and diverse enough now — I've reviewed around a dozen, and I'm sure I've missed several — that there's no need to describe each new entrant as "like Groundhog Day." There's the Edge of Tomorrow-like sci-fi action loop; the Happy Death Day mystery; the teen romp; allegorical horror film; and so on. Given the format's friendliness to low budgets, many of these pictures premiere at fests and disappear; but last year's delightful Palm Springs demonstrated the commercial viability of one variant: the "we're in this together" rom-com, in which two people relive a looping day instead of one, facing the prospect of a will-they/won't-they love story that might actually go on forever.
A pleasing if familiar entrant into this last subgenre, Ian Samuels' The Map of Tiny Perfect Things isn't nearly as bold, funny or thoughtful as its predecessor. It stays well within the scope of the YA tale as it marvels at the little pleasures that make reliving a single day ad infinitum bearable. Kyle Allen and Kathryn Newton balance energies well as the boy who thinks he's found his groundhog girlfriend and the girl whose secrets keep romance at bay. Viewers who haven't soured on the format yet could do much worse than this sweet entry.
Allen's Mark enters the tale, as Nyles did Palm Springs, as a smartass who has lived so many iterations of the same day he can practically play god. He infuriates his sister Emma (Cleo Fraser) at breakfast by knowing her put-downs before she dishes them out; he bikes through downtown preventing mishaps before they occur and giving directions to a cute stranger (Anna Mikami) before she tells him where she's trying to go.
His energies are currently directed at winning that stranger over, trying every variety of meet-cute he can engineer, so far without success. One day, a monkey-wrench throws herself into the scenario: Newton's Margaret is a mystery at first, dashing through settings Mark knows by heart and fleeing before he can ask who she is. But after several days of trying, he tracks her down and confirms that she, too, is aware of the "temporal anomaly." But she has no pressing need to share the experience, and politely tries to brush him off.
"I know you have to go, but you really need to see this," Mark insists, dragging Margaret along so she can witness a bit of sidewalk slapstick that is funny enough he has come back to see it over and over. There are more where this came from: Mark's been keeping a mental list of serendipitous events and small joys — like the celebratory dance an old lady does when she wins at cards. Soon, he convinces Margaret that the two should collect them together, scouring the town methodically to make the film's eponymous map. Is it possible that, if they bear witness to every gift the universe has given on this infinitely repeating day, they'll be allowed to move on to tomorrow?
It's a bit more complicated than that, and Lev Grossman's script relies on a pretty silly, unsatisfying mechanism to unlock the mysteries of the fourth dimension. He's on sturdier ground before and after, though, keeping us guessing at the reasons for Margaret's unwillingness to turn this new friendship into a romance. Where does she keep going every evening when a mystery man named Jared calls her phone? Why does she reveal so little about her personal life?
As attentive as he is to local events, Mark doesn't give much thought to aspects of the world that don't affect him directly. Daily videogame sessions with his best friend (Jermaine Harris), like therapy appointments with a doctor whose memory is erased at the end of the hour, let him work through his frustrations while revealing how blinkered he can be. The script weaves this character flaw into action subtly, allowing Mark's growth to change the movie's behavior in a way that's as clever as its spacetime-physics mumbo-jumbo is contrived. Maybe science is the key to getting the world moving again, maybe character. But there's little doubt that, when the calendar starts clicking into the future, Mark will be less stuck in his own head.
Production companies: Weed Road Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment
Distributor: Amazon Prime
Cast: Kyle Allen, Kathryn Newton, Jermaine Harris, Josh Hamilton, Cleo Fraser, Anna Mikami
Director: Ian Samuels
Screenwriter: Lev Grossman
Producers: Ashley Fox, Akiva Goldsman, Gregory Lessans
Executive producers: Glen Basner, Alison Cohen, D. Scott Lumpkin
Director of photography: Andrew Wehde
Production designer: Kara Lindstrom
Costume designer: Abby O'Sullivan
Editor: Andrea Bottigliero
Composer: Tom Bromley
Casting director: Nancy Nayor
PG-13, 99 minutes
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February 10, 2021 at 04:12AM
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'The Map of Tiny Perfect Things': Film Review - Hollywood Reporter
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