Dir. Robert Schwentke
"I wouldn't change one second of our life together."
The Time Traveler's Wife is about a man, Henry (Eric Bana), whose born with a genetic disorder that sends him jumping through time without a moment's notice. While the condition sounds like it could be fun, it's not. He doesn't get the luxury of controlling where or when he jumps to, and every time he jumps to a different time and place, he ends up naked and defenseless. In a chicken and the egg type of scenario, Henry meets Claire Abshire (Rachel McAdams), or she meets him, it's never really clear how it starts...one of the great what-ifs of the time travel film often ponders. But meeting each other, they know they were meant to be together, and a troubled romance begins.
The Time Traveler's Wife should have been a movie I loved. I'm both really fascinated with time travel tales (see my obsession with Lost and several great films like Timecrimes) and I love cheesy and sappy romance films...I don't know why, I just do. In fact, a film that mixed both of these elements before, The Lake House, ended up being a really enjoyable film, one that I occasionally revisit.
The Time Traveler's Wife, however, managed to disappoint with a borderline mopey and dull script. It's a script that manages to turn time travel into somewhat of a bore. The genetic disorder is a clever twist, and the script deserves credit for that, but all of the romance scenes and everything else just falls a little bit flat. There's not a single memorable line in this film, and that's because all of the dialogue is what you would find in a basic love story. There's no "You had me at hello," or the speech Harry gives Sally when he's telling her all the things he loves about her. This script is just very bland. Serviceable, but bland.
Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams do have a very good chemistry together, and the cinematography is often times incredibly gorgeous, but the weak script, dialogue, and characterizations make it hard to truly appreciate this film. As it stands, it's inventive at times, but an altogether tedious affair which had so much potential for a brilliant melding of two very different genres.
2 out of 5
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