The director of Finding Nemo and Wall-E has made an ambitious yet entirely baffling mess with the help of Rashida Jones and Kate McKinnon
In the first few minutes of In the Blink of an Eye, director Andrew Stanton’s long-gestating, epoch-spanning sci-fi epic, a Neanderthal man (Jorge Vargas) explores a perilously rocky beach 45,000 years ago. For some reason, he decides to climb one of the larger, steeper rocks – for food? For a view? But he loses his grip and falls backward, landing on the sharp stones below with a sickening, visceral squelch.
That moment is, I think, supposed to convey the fragility of early human existence – one second you’re foraging, the next you’re impaled and/or imperiled – though I couldn’t help but think of the film’s own cursed journey. Shot all the way back in 2023, In The Blink of an Eye is just now arriving on Hulu about three years later after many delays – not unheard of in the relatively glacial world of movie production, though never a good sign, especially considering that Stanton is the creative force behind such sentimental juggernauts as Wall-E and Finding Nemo (as well as several other Pixar movies, plus John Carter). The protracted timeline suggested that it was either going to be tricky and ambitious, a hard-fought journey of space and time, or, more likely, a complete mess.
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