The Time Traveller's Wife

Being an immense fan of Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveller's Wife, I attempted to lower my expectations as I walked into the theater to watch the film version. It was a defense mechanism to protect my image of the book from completely shattering. Luckily, lowering my expectations, and silently repeating to myself that changes had probably been made helped me enjoy the film version, and aided in my ability to separate novel from film. It was a very well done film that captured the heart and spirit of the original novel, although many fans of the book will be disappointed to find nearly half of the novel missing.

As a stand-alone film, it flourished, and I would gladly recommend it to anyone who had the understanding that I would add to the recommendation "but it's not as good as the book".
The story was very imaginative, original, and refreshing to the romantic comedy scene. The execution on the other hand was sloppy at points, and the acting faltered more than once.

The Time Traveller's Wife begins with a very young Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) experiencing a horribly traumatizing event, and is met by a future Henry DeTamble who explains to his younger counterpart that they are capable of time travel, and are unable to control it. Future Henry then returns to his own time and meets Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams), who claims that he will visit her in her childhood in his future. It all sounds very confusing, which it is, but is intriguing all the same. The story follows the couple as they attempt to form a working relationship and family, but find that when Henry constantly dissapears in fits of unwilling time travel, things get incredibly tough.

The acting work by Bana and McAdams is really hit and miss. At some points they both work naturally, and you can hardly catch them acting, but there are some parts that made me put my head in my hands and wonder how that particular take found its way into the final cut. They even out nicely, McAdams has a serious problem with understating what her character feels, and Bana has a tendency to overdo it. At times, both feel disconnected to their situation, but at times they feel incredibly engaged. If anything, it was this patchy pattern of acting skill that killed a bit of the film for me, and it honestly is the biggest flaw of the whole project.

This film in particular had many hurdles to jump scriptwise, and I was happy to see it with such a fresh and workable script from Ghost screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin. The lines never get too sappy, and it never turns too melodramatic for the average audience to sympathize with. This is the common trap of the romantic comedy genre. Although it began to run sketchy when explaining Henry's problems (why can't he go back and save people's lives? Because he can't. The end.) it was all very smooth and very well versed.

It all was very beautifully shot, and although the Director of Photography (Florian Ballhaus) and the Art Director (Peter Grundy) have nothing especially glamorous in their pasts, they both worked wonderfully, and the sheer beauty of several scenes were enough to tug at my heartstrings. They only shine in a few scenes, but when they deliver, they deliver big.

It began to run slow a bit in the middle, but the cleverness of the script, and the pull of the incredibly interesting story hauled us out of that funk and hurled us back into the story, which only grew more personal, and more extraordinary.

B-

If you enjoyed The Notebook, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or Ghost, you might like this movie.