Plot synopsis
Michael goes shopping for a universal remote at a department store. He meets the salesman, Morty, who gives him one for free. When he gets home, he finds he can use it to go backwards, pause, or go forwards through time viewing his life. Morty shows up from time to time and explains that Michael cannot go back and change anything; he can only rewind to scenes of his life and view them, like watching a film on a DVD.
Nobody ever notices Marty and him, as they walk around the scenes of his life. Michael fast-forwards to various parts of his life and eventually finds that he has become very successful. But his wife and kids have left him, and she has now remarried. He is rich, successful and very overweight. He has to be careful what he asks for because the remote starts to remember commands and repeat them. It jumps him forward in time when he is not expecting it because that is what he asked it to do when he was in a similar situation last time.
He sees how of much of his personal life he missed and how it is going from bad to worse. At the end of the movie, he wakes up on one of the department store’s beds, back in the present. He thinks it was all a bad dream until he gets home and sees the remote. He then realises that Morty was an angel bringing him a warning, so he starts to make his family a priority, thus creating a different future for himself.
My comments
The fast forward button shows Michael his likely future. The only way he can change that is to return to the present and make changes to his life there. The morals of the plot and model of time used are very similar to other films based on Dickens’ book, A Christmas Carol.
Summary of time travel
Michael can view his past, but is not able to make changes to it, as it is closed. He also travels to his probable future to observe it but cannot change it while there. On his return to his present, he begins to change his behaviour. This causes the timeline to diverge towards a new and better future.
Category of time travel
Science fiction: hand-held device.
Model of time
Closed past, open future with a diverging timeline.
