‘Needle in a Timestack’ Review: John Ridley’s Mushy Time Travel Drama Is Truly Bizarre

Just when you think you’ve seen it all, they go and make a syrupy sci-fi melodrama about two guys using time travel to fight over a woman.

Jumping into the unfortunately growing slate of sci-fi romances, “Needle in a Timestack” is not an ounce as charming as “About Time” and far more self-serious than the equally bizarre but mildly humorous “Timer.” What it does have is a universe with its own rules, one in which everyone is in constant fear of waves known as “time-shifts,” a side effect of time travel, which it calls “jaunting.” Though the movie is The title alone has already inspired titters online, and the movie is just as clunky and overwrought.Broken into chapters corresponding to different romantic configurations as they appear and disappear in the timeline, the movie opens with Nick (Leslie Odom Jr.) and Janine (Cynthia Erivo) in utterly boring wedded bliss.

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