‘Soul-swapping fantasy’
Do you remember the 2013 fantasy-romance About Time? It’s OK if you don’t; it was a forgettable bit of fluff, with Domhnall Gleeson as a man who can travel back to inhabit/replay his earlier life, and Rachel McAdams ( contractually obligated I think) as this time traveller’s wife.
I only bring it up because when you’ve got a wonky conceit like that, you need to explain the rules and then stick to them, or the audience will get restless. About Time didn’t. Every Day’s premise is even more ridonculous, but the screenplay answers most of the bigger how- the- heck questions, and thus gets a passing grade in both metaphysics and teenage romance.
Meet Rhiannon, played by Angourie Rice, who made a splash in The Nice Guys as Ryan Gosling’s whip- smart daughter. In this one she’s a high- schooler in suburban Mar yland, dating a real doofus named Justin ( Justice Smith). Except one day Justin is different. He whisks her away from school and they have a lovely movie-montage day that feels like a first date.
For Justin, it was just that. Get this: Every day, a person named A jumps into a new body, spends 24 hours there and then leaps out again. The host has only a vague memory of the experience, but A remembers it all. Trouble is, the next day he/ she is someone new — always the same age, never far from the last host.
A, in Justin’s body, falls hard for Rhiannon. So the next day, when A comes back as Amy, she tries to strike up something. Then tries again, as Nathan. Then Megan, James, and so on.
Rhiannon, intrigued but wary, asks all the questions I had. Is A male or female? ( A cagey answer: “Yes.”) When did this start? Seems it’s been forever, but A figured it out at about age six. Duration? A can’t spend more than 24 hours as one person, though to be fair s/he’s never tried either.
All pretty simple, but that simplicity extends to the wider plot as well. One kid is certain he’s been possessed by Satan, but for the most part there are relatively few hiccups. An apparently jumps into a blind kid one day, and a lung transplant patient another, but we never get to see how s/ he spends that time.
David Levithan’s 2012 novel introduces more obstructions, but its adaptation by Jesse Andrews ( Me and Earl and the Dying Girl) keeps things plain. Even the girlgirl romance thing is mostly skipped over — although I guess if your soulmate was the “wrong” sex half the time you could live with it. It’s like that one shirt your spouse has that you hate.
The whole thing f eels a bit like Nicholas Sparks light — even some of the posters suggest as much — but director Michael Sucsy ( The Vow) holds back on the cheesiness, and Rice grounds the whole cockamamie story with her naturalistic performance. Oh, and a shout out to Rori Bergman, the casting director who had to find 15 separate actors to play A — including, in freakiest-Friday-ever, Rice herself.
It all adds up to a movie far more enjoyable than the premise suggests, and particularly so for the teenage audience at whom it’s no doubt targeted. If nothing else, they’ll come away with ( I hope) an appreciation of This Is The Day by the recently reformed ’ 80s rock band The The, and a basic knowledge of cause and effect in soul- swapping fantasy.•••½