Our Times had overwhelming potential to be a fresh rom-com, but it needed some fine-tuning of the dialogue and the story, as well as better genre signifiers. Our Times follows married physicist couple Nora (Lucero) and Héctor (Benny Ibarra), both university professors and researchers in Mexico City, who manage to figure out time travel but accidentally launch themselves 50 years into the future.

In the year 2025, a rift begins to form between them as Nora is emboldened by the leap forward in women’s rights and Héctor is still stuck in the past.

Our Times’ Premise Is Interesting, But The Execution Is Way Too Awkward

Gender Roles Just Being Swapped Doesn’t Reflect Reality

For the first 20 minutes or so, Our Times is essentially a period academic rom-com, touching upon some themes of funding issues for groundbreaking research and the inherent Sєxism in the field, especially in the 1960s. But when the characters accomplish time travel, a noticeable shift in tone happens, and the whole film goes off the rails. Nora and Héctor swiftly find a former student, Julia (Ofelia Medina/Carolina Villamil), now the dean of the university, and their great-niece Alondra (Renata Vaca), who provide them with ᴀssistance.

All the 2025 reunions are goofy and happen too easily, but they push the story forward to its bigger concern with the sharp contrasts between times. The characters from the past stumbling into a future full of smartphones creates shenanigans that are moderately thoughtful, as Nora and Héctor like some things but are put off by others. Nora, at least, isn’t judgmental, just surprised. It sure is convenient that a young pan woman at a college party starts talking about her multiple recent flings within earsH๏τ, though.

But at other times, the movie takes the fastest route possible to comedy, which infantilizes the characters. In the most cringeworthy scene I’ve seen put to screen in 2025, the results of Héctor’s implicit Sєxism aren’t funny at all, just embarrᴀssing. Héctor’s experience of “reverse Sєxism” in the present day is also pretty flat and reduces women’s experiences in STEM to “everything is now solved.”

I still think there is something pertinent here about shifting power dynamics between two people who genuinely love and believe in each other, who are realizing the biases so deeply ingrained in their lives that reflect on relationships in both eras, it just didn’t go far enough.

Our Times’ Tone Is All Over The Place, But It Could Have Been A Very Effective Dark Comedy

It Is Melodramatic In A Way That Isn’t Exactly Charming

Part of the reason some of the cringey dialogue is so out of tune is because Our Times hasn’t figured out its genre very well. It is certainly a kind of rom-com, and they keep the time-travel special effects to a minimum, so it’s not too fantastical. But especially in the first act, the generally grounded nature of Nora’s struggles as a female professor in the ’60s sets you up to take this picture somewhat seriously. Even the time-travel hijinks that happen next don’t disrupt it — it’s the Pee-wee’s Big Adventure-leaning soundtrack moment that does it.

This movie was maybe trying to showcase elements of the style of Back to the Future, but the ’80s are not an easy feeling to replicate unironically. I’ve seen so many projects that toe the line between comedy and drama so well that I know Our Times could have done better. Perhaps if the film had embraced the sillier aspects of the story as a backdrop, I’d have been able to get more invested in the darker primary plot, rather than dealing with a distracting confusion of genre trappings.

Characters also occasionally act illogically, mostly to facilitate comedy and move the plot along. Some moments between Héctor and Nora are very sweet; her interactions with the community of women in science in 2025 are also heartwarming. But it is hard to know how to treat these characters, or what genre conventions they are likely to adhere to. In conclusion, the things that are wrong with Our Times make it too wild to pack a punch, but a better version of it certainly exists in one timeline or another.