Well-intentioned in its politics, World and Time Enough tries hard to announce Mueller as an important voice in New Queer Cinema. His overwritten script and faux-arty aesthetic certainly make an impact, but there's nothing effortless here that makes him seem at all accomplished. There's some cleverness, perhaps, in a few key scenes. A particularly good couple have a distant son leaving answering machine messages for his father who's lying there dead. It's also worth noting Mueller has chosen uneducated, working class men in a rural setting, which sets this apart.
Ultimately, Mueller just can't create plausible relationships or intriguing characters. He bites off way more than he can chew in terms of plot, ultimately leaving us with a mishmash of scenes that suggest a movie that might've originally been an hour longer. Gregory Giles and Matt Guidry have romantic chemsitry, but that's nowhere near enough to carry this gimmicky goop.
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