The Present

This is a comedic family drama fantasy about a couple with 3 kids who are on the verge of their separation. With the help of the old magical grandfather clock, their kids trying to stop their parents from separating. The movie showed the story from many points of view. Every time they rewind the day, it started from somebody else's point of view. And it gave the audience a chance to understand and relate to all of the family members. This is a funny, touching and beautiful family movie. I recommend this one to watch with your family. The acting is decent, the story is good, and it has a decent ending.

There's something quite engaging about Easton Rocket Sweda's "Taylor" character in this quite enjoyable and fast-moving family fantasy. He is a young man who loathes being touched and who communicates via an audio-board or by using an Etch-a-Sketch. Indulged? Well that was my first thought, then we meet the family and maybe the kid has the right idea. Anyway, his grandfather's bust old clock arrives and it's put in his basement where he tinkers around with it and gets it, somewhat miraculously, to work. His parents (solid efforts from Isla Blair and Greg Kinnear) have summonsed the family to a dinner that evening to announce their trial separation, but "Taylor" has discovered that the now repaired timepiece allows him to manipulate time - within a twenty four hour period. He reckons that he can change the circumstances of his mum and dad's struggling marriage - but every time he thinks he's on the cusp of averting familial disaster, well we are soon back to square one. He decides to enlist the help of his loved-up sister "Emma" (Shay Rudolph) the then finally their brother "Max" (Mason Shea Joyce - wasn't he in "McFly"?). The more they meddle, though, the messier things get as the grown ups all lurch from one near miss to an other. Old Father Time is starting to get a bit bored with the repetitive nature of this story (not just him) and when the kids realise that they can't keep doing this indefinitely, things have to come to an head. It works quite well for about an hour with quite a quirky storyline and the five main characters having some fun with almonds, a shiny red sports car and some fake snow but thereafter the story starts to recycle itself once too often as we head to what was always a fairly predictable conclusion. It's an easy film to watch, but not one you will remember and probably not one that needs to be seen in a cinema.

A cinema release without any prior reviews on a few major websites?! How about that!

I gotta say, 'The Present' surprised me big time! The lack of awareness that I had for it prior to watching (to be expected based on the earlier mentioned, evidently), a bog-standard poster and a meh-sounding premise meant that I wasn't expecting much from this 2024 flick. However, I had a seriously good time viewing it!

It's, in my opinion, a well crafted movie and, unexpectedly, quite amusing, it is also extremely touching when all is said and done. Isla Fisher and Greg Kinnear make for a solid onscreen pairing, while the trio of youngsters in Shay Rudolph, Easton Rocket Sweda and Mason Shea Joyce - even if the latter has less to work with - all give good performances.

One bad thing about me leaving the first review is if everyone else dislikes this, so here's hoping that a barrage of low-rated reviews aren't forthcoming!😆 Hey-ho, I had fun with it and that's all I can say!

This reviewer has a weakness for time travel story arcs. Oddly, even now, the Gold Standard for TT movies remains Groundhog Day; and, for series, the Janeway Trekkie episodes. As consumers of entertainment, we as a culture have now come to the point where a time travel story has to be 'different' to get attention. At that, THE PRESENT 2024 delivers. It is very clever. It all takes place in the present but, paradoxically, the present keeps getting altered in subtle ways. Up to you to spot that. The script and direction are ... sharp. There is no pandering of any kind to the audience. In fact, the viewer is actually expected to approach the movie like an interactive crossword puzzle, and puzzle it out dynamically. As the story unfolds. The characters are interesting, and the actors deliver. Upbeat tone. Pleasant ending. In other words -- yet another paradox. This is the kind of light and fluffy movie they used to make ... before anyone ever heard of Time Travel movies. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))

A brilliant but mute boy (Easton Rocket Sweda) discovers that he can manipulate time using a family heirloom. He soon teams up with his siblings in returning to the time of their parents' separation, with hopes of changing the outcome.

The idea isn't new, but it's still an enticing idea: being able to control time to affect an outcome. The story has a sweet and wholesome intent, to get the warring parents back together so the family remains whole. Greg Kinnear is as good as you would expect as the father, the rest of the performances aren't bad, but they're pretty meh.

The film itself is slightly annoying in that going back in time is one thing, doing it repeatedly so many times is quite tedious and boring. We got the idea early on so the manic repetitive i think was filling in for a story that could so easily have been a short film. Also silly camera tricks that have proven to universally not be liked at all, such as spinning around a group of people in circles, made me almost motion sick and I had to fast forward through some parts. There were some quite childish scenes too so I wonder if the makers meant this film to be aimed at younger children whose parents were thinking of divorce?

It wasn't awful, but it wasn't great, I gave it a 5.