Quirky, hipster dramedies have no place on Cerebral Coitus. Allow me to argue why The Future might well be an exception.
If mindfuckiness could be expressed on a scale of 1 - 10, 1 being not mindfucky at all and 10 being really mindfucky, then The Future, at the very most, would score a 2.75. I'd say it averages on a 1.874 though. Oh goodness, I'm not doing a very good job of arguing my point here. But that is kind of OK, because neither does The Future.
All levity aside, this is one of those movies that are so vague and broad that you could more or less read anything you wanted into it. While there are some strong themes there, even those can be interpreted in any number of ways. On the surface, the movie says a lot about the fickle way in which we perceive time. No, no. Don't start getting excited. It's simply a point about perspective, and not some hardout sci-fi nonsense, although there is a little bit of that in the mix also.
There are a lot of films out there about people having midlife crises, but none that I've seen that present them in such an agreeable and relatable fashion. This is really a huge compliment, because the two lead characters are decidedly unlikeable. Boundlessly self-absorbed and very childlike, I couldn't help but feel an urge to beat their faces in until all that sickly naiveté bled out of them. It is quite surprising, and a real accomplishment for the movie's story telling, that even regardless of my feelings about the leads I enjoyed it as much as I did.
Writing about a film like this is not something I relish because before I finish each paragraph there's 5 more things that pop into my head that I could write about. Technology, change / periods of transition, passion versus comfort in a relationship, self-image and self-perception, passage of time, and how we choose what occupies our own respective headspaces are all things that the movie strongly addresses amongst a host of other stuff, by using two characters who would not be all that out of place in Napoleon Dynamite. It's certainly a strange recipe that for the most part actually works. The problem with using such broadstrokes is that nothing really stands out - it talks a bit about how different perspectives on the same issue will result in different outcomes, and that was about 3 lines of dialogue, and then the film moved on. It really stuck out to me personally, because it resonated with something completely unrelated that I was thinking about at the time.
It's such an unrestricted amalgamation of themes, a conglomerate of everyday thoughts and feelings. Unfocused, and filled with both the minute detail and the pretentiously grandiose. Show this film to 100 people, and you'll have 100 very different takes on it. This is both fittingly ironic and a little annoying because this movie isn't about how it makes you feel, and what it makes you think, it's completely the other way around; whatever is in your head at the time you watch it is what the movie will end up being about. Take that as you will.