Enjoyably slick and smart, that's "Parallel"
“Shh! Listen! Someone's coming! I think -- I think it might be us!” J.K. Rowling
App developers and also friends, Devin (Ami Ameen-yes, he looks much like Will Smith), Josh (Mark O’Brien), Leena (Georgia King), and Noel (Martin Wallstrom), are about to go into a contemporary version of The Twilight Zone or an adult Narnia through a much-tried trope, the magic mirror. It’s Isaac Ezban’s slick and smart Parallel, where none of it, not even lucrative time travel, is good for participants.
However, traveling through the mirror into a multiverse means friends are able to develop programs after they see them in the future, win at lotteries, and try to figure out what version of their friends they are making love to. Yes, even that eventually is tedious for them and some of the audience.
They acquire hefty envy from their rivals and the public as they grow richer, and guess what, unhappier. We, however, can enjoy the splendid, splashy cinematography by Karim Hussain and dizzying Ezban camera that enhance the eerie old house/mirror from the comfort of our Sci-fi/thriller comfortable chair.
Much as impressive writer Scot Blaszak includes some hip lingo and with-it characters, he can’t completely overcome the weight of formula, albeit he smartly mixes up the conventions to give it a casual, modern feel. We’re not dealing with Christopher Nolan here, who knows a thing or two about time, or Stanley Kubrick, who can spin a camera around like a fun house.
Rather we have a solid sci-fi/thriller/drama with titillating themes about messing around with the supernatural, giving into greed, and most of all knowing your friends and lovers better. I say that makes a very talkable evening in which friends can get to know each other better without using a magic mirror as a very dangerous crutch.
Parallel
Director: Isaac Eban (The Similars)
Screenplay: Scott Blaszak
Cast: Georgia King (Austenland), Ami Ameen (Kidulthood)
Run Time: 1h 44m
John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JohnDeSando62@gmail.com
