‘Blink’ Review: A Family Tries to Make Memories Before They Lose Their Vision in a Tearjerking Travel Doc

Like many parents with young children — and like all parents with four of them — Edith and Sébastien are constantly exhausted when we first meet them. The Montreal-based couple adores their kids, but the daily grind of chores, activities, homework, and general chaos leaves them in a constant fog as they struggle to make it through the days without a crisis. They lead a life that’s fulfilling in the grand scheme of things, but often unsatisfying on a daily basis.

But even the most cemented routines are capable of crumbling overnight, and the family quickly finds their entire world turned upside down when they receive some unimaginably painful news. Three of their four children were diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, an incurable degenerative disease that eventually results in near-total loss of vision. Devastated by the realization that they have a finite window to make visual memories with their children, the couple makes the bold decision to leave their lives behind with the hope of capitalizing on the time they have left.

Edmund Stenson and Daniel Roher’s “Blink” follows the Lemay-Pelletier family as they embark on a global backpacking trip to show their children everything that’s worth seeing while they still can. From African safaris to rainforest expeditions to fleeting glimpses of the Aurora Borealis, they invest every resource available to them in the pursuit of pulling off a lifetime’s worth of adventure in a few short months. They allow their children to set most of the agenda, which results in a bucket list that is centered around general experiences rather than specific places. When a child says they want to eat with chopsticks, look at giraffes, or drink juice from the back of a camel, Mom and Dad simply find a way to get them to a place where it can be done.

While anyone with an iota of empathy will be moved by Edith and Sébastien’s heroic effort to make the best of a horrific situation, the actual film offers little beyond its heartwarming premise. “Blink” unfolds like a straightforward travel documentary, prioritizing picturesque photography of exotic locations and carefully selected moments of cuteness over narrative depth. The family’s massive list of travel destinations is impressive, but the drawback is that the 80-minute film is unable to devote sufficient time to any of them. The result is a breezy feel-good story that passes quickly, but there isn’t much to be gained from watching the entire thing that couldn’t be achieved by watching the first 30 minutes.

From a moral standpoint, it’s hard to fault anyone involved for making saccharine creative choices — these are real children in a tragic situation, so there’s no harm in preserving an idealized, if simplistic, document of their great adventure. But from a filmmaking standpoint, it’s hard to recommend “Blink” to cinephiles looking for anything more than a feel-good distraction.

Still, the overarching message of “Blink” is one that you can never hear too many times. Edith and Sébastien are the first to admit that the constant mundanities of everyday life had pushed them into a rut. When daily inconveniences seem endless, it’s easy to take the magic of being alive for granted. It took a tragedy to get them out of their shells, but they quickly realized how beautiful everything seems when your opportunities to see it become finite. The filmmakers have better taste than to ever insinuate that the heartbreaking circumstances are any kind of blessing in disguise, but it’s apparent that the Lemay-Pelletier crammed more living into this final adventure than they might have done in an entire lifetime of uninterrupted health.

More than anything, “Blink” succeeds as a film about the lengths that parents will go to give their children every possible ounce of joy in an indifferent world that too often has cruel other plans for them. And while Stenson and Roher don’t shy away from showing the sacrifices it entails, they make it clear that providing moments of childhood magic can be just as much of a gift for the parents as it is for their children.

Grade: B-

National Geographic Documentary Films will release “Blink” in theaters nationwide on Friday, October 4.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best reviews, streaming picks, and offers some new musings, all only available to subscribers.