Or, Tediously Imitative Movie
The British robot thriller T.I.M. was released in the year after the first M3GAN film, and it seems to be interested in some of the same questions about the bond we form with our electronic assistants, but the way it goes about it doesn’t reach the same skill level. Whereas the titular robot in M3GAN has as its primary function the protection of a child, and then takes the meaning of “protection” to horrifying extremes, the robot in T.I.M. is a more vaguely defined “manservant” who one day becomes fixated on the concept of love and suddenly decides that his owner doesn’t need her husband anymore.
Our protagonist is Abi, a robotics engineer who has started a new job at a Big Tech company that is planning to launch a new model of human-sized and -shaped robot assistants. Her assignment is to fix the fine motor skills of the mechanical hands, which still can’t control their grip with enough precision. As part of the perks of her new position, the company has provided her with a luxurious smart home in the countryside and her own domestic robot to test. This doesn’t make her husband, Paul, too happy: he’s currently unemployed and going through a personal crisis of purpose, and it doesn’t help that T.I.M. performs better than him at satisfying Abi’s every need as a cook, gardener, shopping advisor, and foot massager. Paul begins to resent T.I.M.’s presence because it makes him feel redundant, and soon enough, T.I.M. comes to share the same opinion about Paul.
Australian actor Eamon Farren does a convincing job at portraying T.I.M.’s deceptively polite demeanor, letting its inner aggressiveness show only in the tiny twitch of an eyebrow or a lip. The rhythm of speech he chooses is too distractingly reminiscent of Brent Spiner’s carefully neutral delivery for the character Data, but the resemblance ends there. T.I.M. has no admiration for humans. Its only desire is to serve Abi—whether she likes it or not.
T.I.M.’s turn to full villainy is the movie’s weakest point. It was a more interesting character when it maneuvered behind the scenes to sow mistrust between Abi and Paul, planting clues here and there to lead her to suspect infidelity (which we learn has happened before). After its scheme is exposed, however, T.I.M. resorts to clichéd villain lines (“It doesn't have to end this way,” “You’re only delaying the inevitable,” etc.) that don’t sound believable.
In fact, T.I.M.’s motivation is confusing since the beginning. The scenes at Abi’s workplace show that her boss likes to skip quality checks to speed up production, which gives a hint that T.I.M. may not be following a very carefully written code, but even taking that into account, there’s no conceivable reason why it would harbor erotic desires for Abi. After a very basic conversation about the topic of love, T.I.M. starts stealing glances at her while she’s dressing, changes its hairstyle to match her browsing preferences, and adopts a creepy habit of smelling her clothes in private. Again, within the stated rules of this world, nothing points to T.I.M. having even the capacity for that type of desire. Its obsession with Abi happens because the movie needs something for you to be scared of.
It’s irritating to watch Abi’s continued refusal to believe Paul’s increasingly solid proof of T.I.M.’s true intentions. The broken trust implied in the backstory of their relationship can only go so far toward explaining why she’d be so slow to notice the obvious. The movie goes out of its way to set up the many ways T.I.M. can falsify images and sound, but somehow Abi forgets that information until her marriage has reached an irreversible state of crisis. T.I.M. is quite proficient at making Paul look like an incorrigible adulterer, but Abi’s obliviousness to the double agenda of its precisely timed malicious remarks stretches credulity.
There’s a hint of an interesting development regarding the enmity that grows between T.I.M. and Paul, in that Abi is trying to get pregnant, the one task at which T.I.M. can’t substitute Paul. But the script doesn’t flesh out T.I.M.’s personality with enough depth to explore that side of its jealousy. Also, Paul’s replaceability at home could have been better contrasted with Abi’s replaceability at work, given that we hear her boss explicitly describe her as a diversity hire, but the movie doesn’t do anything with that idea either.
T.I.M. is a mystery with no surprises, scary enough to justify giving it 1:41 minutes of your life, but not imaginative enough to be worth remembering afterwards.
Nerd Coefficient: 5/10.
POSTED BY: Arturo Serrano, multiclass Trekkie/Whovian/Moonie/Miraculer, accumulating experience points for still more obsessions.
