Time seems to stand still in the Mexican dramedy/romance “Our Times.” Lacking urgency and slow-footed in the extreme, its 90 minutes crawl by as it laboriously makes its points about the sweeping changes in relations between the sexes in culture and work over the past sixty years.

Two Mexico City university professors, Nora (Mexican TV star Lucero) and Hector (singer/actor Benny Ibarra) teach and put in the overtime as they try to test the limits of Einstein’s theories about space and time with this big, pricey gadget they’ve been working on.

It may look more like a Lunar Module than the device in the George Pal’s famous 1960 film of H.G. Wells’ most famous novel. But they’re both time machines.

The year is 1966 and Nora is something of a pioneer, a woman physics professor. She is patronized by all the men around her, with her department chair calling her “sweetheart” and deliveries of parts she ordered from the Soviet Union are thoughtlessly passed on to other men and eventually her husband.

A female student who idolizes her would love to be her first assistant. Fat chance of getting money for that.

But Nora and Hector are close, and with a little tinkering/rethinking they strap in wearing old leather helmets and goggles and give it one more try. Their “fifteen minutes into the future” trip turns out to have shot them 59 years ahead in time.

The plot is about them being “trapped” in this new time, fretting over a wormhole “portal” about to close as they attempt repairs. But the movie is about the different world Nora finds herself in, one with respect, opportunity and a chance to realize her loftiest ambitions.

That student who wanted to be her assistant? Julia (Ofelia Medina of “Frida,” “Before Night Falls” and “Colombiana”) is now the venerable department chair. Julia and the student granddaughter of Nora’s sister, Alonda (Renata Vaca of “Saw X”) are the only people who can know where she and Hector came from, and the place he’s most anxious to return to, “Nuestros Tiempos.”

They’re amazed that the planned Mexico City subway is now a reality, puzzled at such novel concepts as sexual identity and dismayed at the screens everybody stares into.

“A machine that hypnotizes them,” Hector wonders (in Spanish, or dubbed)?

There’s no smoking. “What do they have against smoking?” Fashions and the women who wear them are liberated.

And the university women — professors and students — don’t have time for any Hector “mansplaining” or assertions of the old gender heirarchy.

The script wanders into the seismic changes in attitudes, attire and the culture at large in all the most predictable ways. Hector is more resistant to “letting our eyes get used to this world” when the one he’s desperate to return to is dogmatically committed to holding Nora back.

That’s defensible messaging, and a few scenes of Hector’s out-of-control “mansplaining” play.

The performances pass muster.

But there’s no pace and zero urgency to this. The dated, tame sexual jokes don’t really land and the romantic twist is both touching and so old fashioned it wears cobwebs.

This hasn’t the wit of “Safety Not Guaranteed” or “Back to the Future” (a DeLorean is a rare sight gag), or the danger of “Primer” or the Spanish thriller “Time Crimes”( “Cronoscrimenes”).

And no one involved makes much effort to make the big romance at its heart play in a “Time Traveler’s Wife” or “Somewhere in Time” sense.

The good intentions are obvious, but the movie wrapped around them is a something of a bore.

Rating: TV-14, smoking, sexual situations

Cast: Lucero, Benny Ibarra, Renata Vaca and
Ofelia Medina

Credits: Directed by Chava Cartas, scripted by Juan Carlos Garzón and Angélica Gudiño. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:30