If given the opportunity, most people would probably opt to turn back time and change at least one thing from their pasts. Aside from not knowing how one change could affect everything else, there’s also the small issue of it not being possible, at least as far as we know. Eternal Return conjures up a fantastical way to go back to a key moment in your past, dreaming up a magical idea of using maps and locations to complete a pattern to get there. While it’s certainly imaginative, it’s lacking in almost every other way, painting a picture defined by whimsy and not at all grounded in reality.
On her twenty-ninth birthday, Cass (Naomi Scott) sits miserable in her unexciting life in a London bar. Years earlier, she had premonitions that showed her a lovely future with Julian (Jay Lycurgo), but their happiness was cut short when he died in a plane crash she didn’t see coming. A chance encounter with a cartographer named Virgil (Kit Harington) opens her eyes to a new world of optimistic possibilities as he prepares a way for his good friend Malcolm (Simon Callow) to go back to a formative memory in 1965 in New York City. As she sees the joy Malcolm experiences in remembering bits and pieces of what he used to love so much, she asks Virgil to make her a map so that she too can go back to when she was actually happy.
This film opens with a narrator describing the exact time on the exact day of Cass’ life, charting several moments in that way. It’s a device reminiscent of Pushing Daisies, an undeniably favorable comparison, but it’s inconsistently used. Presented strongly at the start, it becomes less and less frequent throughout, returning at unexpected intervals to bring the film back to that same level of delightful whimsy. As soon as Cass spends some time with Julian and Malcolm, the film reaches a new point of carefree ecstasy as they drive around London getting to experience little bits of wonder together, all in service of getting Malcolm back to the place he so wants to be.
It’s not at all clear who the target audience of this film is meant to be. There’s little objectionable content, so it could easily be aimed at children, and there’s nothing sophisticated about the story that would make it challenging to comprehend for young viewers. The characters are very thinly drawn, seeming to exist only in their shared space together. Cass does have two friends she confides in, but we don’t get to learn anything about them other than that the two of them have a very contentious relationship with one another, and, aside from a cat whose funeral is the place where Malcolm first meets Cass, there’s nothing learned about either Malcolm or Virgil outside of this three-way friendship.
For its shortcomings, this film is a generally uplifting experience, and Callow is clearly having a blast playing Malcolm as a very typical jolly English old man without a filter who chooses to not to only complain and talk negatively about others but to look for the joy whenever he can find it. Harington is doing the furthest thing from Jon Snow here but also doesn’t inject much enthusiasm into his muted character, who is most often seen with glasses on the tip of his nose waiting for someone else to speak first. Scott, fresh off a very positive reception for Smile 2, does the best she can with the material, but it’s hard to buy into Cass as a real person since she’s full of inconsistencies.
Time travel can make for some of the richest fodder for moviemaking, but in this case, it’s all theoretical and imaginative without any kind of satisfactory delivery system. This film isn’t sure what it wants to be at all, and those hints of greatness, like the narrator’s buoyancy or the concept that a map could actually lead back in time, prove ultimately unfulfilling since they’re merely sparkle rather than substance. Eternal Return, like its characters with their maps, dreams of being a better movie but only offers a brief picture of what that might have been.
Movie Rating: 5/10
