SXSW Review: ‘One More Shot’ Puts a Fun Twist on an Always Appealing Time Loop Premise

While most moviegoers have likely not been stuck in a literal time loop in real life, they’ve surely seen enough movies and TV shows where characters realize that their days are repeating and immediately seek to do one thing: find a way to make it stop so that they can continue on to the next day. One More Shot features a similar setup but takes a refreshingly different path once its characters catches on to what’s happening, pursuing a new outcome that she wants to achieve even if she’s not sure she’ll ever get to experience what happens after it.

It’s New Year’s Eve in 1999, and Minnie (Emily Browning) isn’t having a great day. She’s just come from delivering a baby whose father had told her right before they broke up that he never wanted kids but apparently moved on quite quickly and made the choice to start a family with someone else. When she arrives at a party and she’s warmly greeted by her ex, Joe (Sean Keenan), who also has a new partner to parade in front of her, she soon discovers that taking a shot from the bottle of tequila she has in her possession enables her to start over at the beginning of the night. A moment of apparent connection with Joe convinces her that, with enough tries, she can get him to realize that he’s meant to be with her instead.

Where this magical bottle of tequila came from and how it works isn’t all that important to this entertaining comedy from first-time feature director Nicholas Clifford and screenwriters Gregory Erdstein and Alice Foulcher. The focus is on its protagonist and how she’s become fixated on something other than the impending end of the world when the clock strikes 2000, ready to take advantage of an inexplicable, impossible situation to improve her romantic odds without stopping to question whether using that incredible power to manipulate the universe is even a good idea.

Browning brings the perfect demeanor to Minnie in this film, someone who has her life together professionally-speaking but can’t seem to get anywhere personally, making the wrong romantic choices and then being confronted very directly with the other women that her past partners have chosen. Minnie isn’t pathetic but she also certainly doesn’t have it together, and seeing her commit to one thing above all else feels like a misuse of her considerable skills, but that doesn’t make it any less engaging and fun to watch as she tries every possible different permutation to manipulate events to get the outcome she wants.

The ensemble also plays into the effectiveness of this film, offering brief glimpses of each of these characters and how they respond to the variable behavior of this unpredictable protagonist. Keenan in particular shows a range of emotions as Minnie presses Joe for more of his time and attention, and Ashley Zukerman is a standout from the cast as one of the party’s hosts who insists on a millennium-related prank that never goes well any of the times that Minnie and audiences experience it.

On the spectrum of time loop movies and shows, this film probably skews closest to Palm Springs without as much laugh-out-loud comedy. Minnie isn’t trying to cause chaos but still doesn’t go the route of subtle changes to push things slightly in the direction she wants, instead favoring dramatic action to get her to her desired result as quickly as possible. Audiences will surely enjoy the experience in this film that doesn’t seek to reinvent the wheel but instead tweak it just enough to offer a new take on a familiar concept that almost always delivers a satisfying ride and certainly does in this case.

Movie Rating: 8/10