T.I.M. - Mark Reviews Movies

T.I.M., Brainstorm Media

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 11, 2024

There are plenty of questions that arise with the advancement and implementation of artificial intelligence in the world. The very silly thriller T.I.M. offers one that's probably not worth losing any sleep over: What if an android fell in love with a woman and tried to wreck her marriage?

Such an idea might have worked with even a little development of such a simplistic concept, but the screenplay by director Spencer Brown and Sarah Govett doesn't even bother to give its robotic villain a believable motive. The thing seriously just does fall in love with a woman after watching an old movie with her, and from there, the story only becomes increasingly comical as the android's romantic obsession escalates and the dumb husband can't figure out a way to rationally communicate that such is the case.

To be fair to the guy, this is not a rational idea in the first place. It's little wonder he can't explain it to his wife, but a little effort on his part—and even a hint caution when he realizes the android's intentions for him are dangerous—might have gone a long way. Instead, we're left to judge which of these characters makes the least sense: the lovesick A.I., the bumbling husband, or the android engineer who doesn't give a second thought to all of the odd, creepy things her robotic manservant is capable of doing and sometimes does right in front of her.

Yes, the android T.I.M. (Eamon Farren) is what his acronym states. He's a Technologically Integrated Manservant, developed by the company where Abi (Georgina Campbell, who serves as a pretty good excuse for an A.I. developing romantic feelings, at least) takes a new job so she and her husband Paul (Mark Rowley) can live in the country instead of London.

The back story for the move is that Paul had an affair in the recent past, and Abi doesn't even trust him to be in a heavily populated area, apparently. She's over her husband's philandering enough, though, to want to have a child with him, and with that kind of character writing, is it any wonder that the screenplay just assumes we'll buy that an android can fall in love and become a cunning Iago-like figure because Abi vaguely explains what love means to her?

The android's creepiness, by the way, is displayed exactly how one would expect it to be. The robot bursts in on the couple having sex, presumably because it's worried about their vital signs. It stares from a partially opened door as Abi sits in the bath. T.I.M. smells her dress in full view of one of the house's many security cameras (It knows the camera is there, too, because it looks at the device with a weird little look, so why would it risk the chance of providing such pretty obvious evidence?). When Abi is dressing for a work party, T.I.M. catches stares at her in her underwear for just long enough that she kind of notices. Does this make Abi smart enough to know the story's premise is ludicrous or stupid enough to not think anything of those deviant glares, even after Paul makes his suspicions about T.I.M. known?

There's the distinct possibility that at least some people involved in the making of the movie know this funny. Farren, for example, is a hoot as the monotone, passive-aggressive pervert of an android, but how much of that is the deadpan stillness of his performance, as opposed to how blatantly devious the character becomes?

T.I.M.'s attempts to sabotage the marriage and put doubts about Paul into Abi's mind are foreshadowed with amusing bluntness (a woman who just shows up—and keeps showing up at the best/worst times for the plot—to mention she and Paul have talked, self-driving cabs, deep fake technology, the android's ability to copy a person's voice and make purchases on behalf of a user and answer emails and, handily, anything else the movie requires it to do). The most egregiously dumb payoff of the bunch might be how and why Paul ends up in a certain car, despite knowing exactly what the result could be.

Certain movies achieve such a level of internal illogic that it starts to become difficult to determine if the filmmakers are in on as much of the joke as the movie is. That's certainly the case with T.I.M., which basically becomes a comedy of errors by its climactic showdown. The straight-faced tone and approach of the movie, though, make it pretty obvious that wasn't the intention.

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