A Repartição do Tempo

In Brasilia, the patent office is a model of bureaucratic inefficiency. An elderly inventor comes in with a time machine made out of a punch time clock. To his dismay, his prototype is taken in and the patent is expected after years of bureaucratic work. Tyrannical manager Lisboa demands greater effort from his lazy workers. When he discovers a working time machine in storage, he decides to duplicate his workers and lock them in the nuclear bunker as slave labor.

This Brazilian sci-fi has touches of Brazil and the modern workplace fatalism of Office Space. It's dark. It's fun. It's weird. It's a lot of interesting things. It needs to spend a bit more money on design. It could get darker. Quite frankly, it's already slave labor. The time travel concept is not that clear but the movie doesn't really dwell on it. There are a lot of different characters. I wouldn't mind spending more time with the two cops. I like the concept and the tone of this movie.

Very clever idea, nice characters and the most perfect concept for a villain possible: a neo-liberal boss! There are some magic realism and cartoon elements which are quite nice, but not everything works at the best. Sometimes confusing, sometimes too amateurish, this film could have been great with minor adjustments. Anyway, if there are many comedies in Brazilian cinema, we cannot say the same about sci-fi genre, and it is nice to watch it. The reproduction of the stereotype of inneficient public service could also be a problem, but it is not because of the aforementioned boss, the stereotype of the heartless meritocratic rascal, who balances it.