The Time Traveler’s Wife Review
By: T.J. “it’s a… real circus” Mulligan
Being an ardent movie fan means making certain sacrifices every once in a while. For me, usually all I want to watch is something devastating that will make me reevaluate the world, something with lots of explosions and little plot or something that makes me laugh and forget about the everything for a while. Concurrently, there is also a list that usually runs parallel and opposite of this one: movies I have absolutely no interest in watching. That list consist mainly of predictably schlocky horror movies, un-funny attempts at pop culture comedy (usually movies ending in the word Movie) or cheesy romance flicks with ridiculously unnecessary twists in plot. As you can probably guess, I filed The Time’s Traveler’s Wife firmly away on my second list the minute I heard about it. But, as stated in the first sentence, being a movie fan (and for about a year and a half now a low-rent movie critic) means wading through some of the easily-dismissed-on-first-glance films. Sometimes a gem can be found, proving the old adage “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover,” other times you prove to yourself that if the cover sucks, just set the book down and walk away.
The Time Traveler’s Wife is the story of Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana), a man who learns at an early age that he can travel through time after doing so before the fatal wreck that claims his mother’s life. His ability is confirmed when, upon returning to the scene of the wreck, he is met by an older version of himself who clothes him (he loses his clothes when he travels, just like in The Terminator) and tells him quite matter-of-factly what just occurred. Years later, working in a library in Chicago, he is approached by a woman named Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams) who acts very familiar toward him and asks him to dinner. There, she explains that she has known him for years and that the future version of himself has traveled back in time on multiple occasions to visit her throughout her youth and into young adulthood. From this their love grows, eventually leading them to marry and attempt to start a family. Henry’s uncontrollable time traveling, however, takes it’s toll on their relationship, leaving Clare alone for up to weeks at a time and even interfering with their attempts to have a child. Theirs is a love that has overcome many odds, but can it overcome time itself?
This movie has “ridicule me” seemingly encoded into its script. There are so many ridiculous situations I don’t even really know where to start. I guess the best place would be the fact that this is essentially the story of an old man sweet-talking a young girl into falling in love with him. Every time a scene occurred in which old Henry was talking to young Clare I felt physically uncomfortable watching it. Sure he can’t help where he travels to and, yeah, I guess if I were to meet my wife as a child I would just try and have as normal a conversation as I could under the circumstances too, but it’s still weird to imagine that one second he’s talking to a six-year old version of the woman he loves and the next he’s returning to the adult her to join her in their marital bed. Call me crazy, I just find it very off-putting. Then we have the character of Clare: she’s the titular character of a movie clearly advertised toward woman and she almost completely lacks independence. She makes it clear that, from her youth, she has been drawn to this one man and that she has absolutely no control of her own life. Not the best message to send to the film’s young female audience: when you fall in love, give up control of your future because it’ll all just work out. My last major gripe is with the way the movie plays out chronologically. What we have is a movie that essentially takes place over about 40 years, with multiple shifts in time, yet there is never any denotation of what year(s) is being represented on screen. This may just be me editorializing (and I have no clue if the book plays out the same way), but in a movie where your central plot device is time travel shouldn’t you clue the audience in as to the year every once in a while. It’s unnecessarily confusing and easily fixable.
Now for the sad admission of truth: despite the fact that I could rip on this movie from the opening shot to the closing credits, I actually dug it. Question my sanity, rip on my journalistic integrity, verbally shit on me or whatever you feel like you need to do, I can’t help it, I couldn’t dislike this movie. Regardless of the flaws, the film has a disarming charm. McAdams and Bana both did a fine job with their characters, the chemistry between them never feels forced and the underlying theme of “love conquers all” is a classic that just sits right with me. It may be a predictable story with a laughable premise, but The Time Traveler’s Wife worked for me on a fundamental level that I don’t fully understand even as I type this.
I give The Time Traveler’s Wife 3 disappearing Banas out of 5.
