The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Charmed really is the best word to describe my feelings about The Time Travelers Wife. This film was just so enjoyable to me, it zipped by, felt like no time had gone by because of how engaged I was. Wasn't that the perfect way to describe the pacing for this particular film lol. I am not familiar with the source material this is based off of, so I can't speak to how audiences who have read the novel will feel about it, but I personally really enjoyed this. I think a lot of the film's strength comes from the two lead actors. Rachel Mcadams and Eric Bana are both so great here, and I love them as a couple, I think they have great chemistry. I like them better together than I like her and Gosling, that's how much I really loved them as a couple. The film builds the depth and emotion necessary for the third act, it invests you in these characters. The key to a film like this is to do a good job with investing us in these people and their lives, or else it just becomes crazy empty time travel film. The time travel aspect of the film is handled well and I think they do it in a way to where it doesn't become choppy. I really don't know why this film got so many negative reviews, I loved it and think they did a great job. 9/10.

I'll have to admit up front that I did not bother to watch the entire movie; it was too boring to endure more than the first hour. The acting (by all) is lifeless; I suspect the cast ("miscast" would be a better word) was bored, too. The dialogue is amateurish and just plain silly; the kind of bad dialogue one would expect from Grade-C novels or the daydreams of teenage girls. In fact, the male characters are more female than male. There is very little in the way of story (he time-travels, in and out). That's just about it. I won't reveal any plot or sub-plot (if there IS one) information. To add to the misery, the filmmakers decided they just had to add their little political digs (anti-Republican, as usual). (NOTE TO Hollywood MOVIE EXECS: Most of us don't care one whit about your political beliefs; stop trying to shove them down our throats.) As for you potential viewers, do yourself a favor: Rather than waste a couple of dreary, lifeless hours viewing this film, go outside and count cracks in the sidewalk. I guarantee you'll have a more interesting time.

From my vantage point, the definitive romantic time travel movie is the classic 1980 Somewhere in Time with Christopher Reeves and Jane Seymour. Sad to say, The Time Traveler's Wife falls far well short in comparison because while it has a bit of romantic sentimentality, it's bogged down by a terribly muddled and eye-rolling time travel element. The time traveler played by Eric Bana has a bizarre genetic condition that causes him to randomly jump back and forth in time like a ping pong ball. Each time he has to endure these time jumps, his clothes stay behind and has had to beg, borrow or steal some duds. He's also prevented from changing the course of events (e.g. preventing his mother from dying in a car wreck) but did manage to remember some lotto picks so his wife could win the lottery in the future -sigh-. They say love conquers but the time plot was simply too preposterous and confusing; if they have made it a farcical comedy, it might have worked.

I was rather looking forward to this because time travel is so full of conundrums and paradoxes. The concept can be played with and variously shaped.This one takes a shape too, but it's a variation on an all too familiar theme. A beautiful young couple fall hopelessly in love and then it develops that the tall, handsome man has something wrong with him and it interferes with their happiness. There's something he's keeping secret from her, something he may not even be able to control. Does he have a secret identity -- a CIA agent or a Mafia hit man? Nope. Is it another woman? Uh-uh. Is it a disease? Well -- yes and no.Eric Bana, the hunky time traveler doesn't know whether he's coming or going, and when he's gone, nobody knows where to. I'll tell you, it's a great big nuisance. How would YOU like it if, on your wedding night, you were lying on the bed laughing while your newly minted husband is jumping on the mattress for pure joy and then suddenly, POOF, and there's nothing there but a rumpled tuxedo? Talk about your major disappointment! It's all pretty generic. It has Bana tripping through time, often at awkward moments, and meeting cute little Rachel McAdams, first at the age of about six and then, on and off, until they're both in their twenties.There's only so much the script can do with Bana's peregrinations so another difficulty is introduced at about the halfway point. He has a "genetic anomaly" that's not only responsible for his travels (apparently, the explanation is murky) but also makes it impossible for McAdams to have her cherished baby with his genes."Groundhog Day" dealt with the opposite problem. Bill Murray was stuck in one single day, living it over and over. And a romance provided the spine for that story too. But "Groundhog Day" was a success, a hilarious comedy built around a credible romance.In contrast, "The Time Traveler's Wife" is a soap opera with a lemon twist. No kidding. At one point, Bana manages to be absent for two weeks and she chides him for missing both Christmas and New Years. Then she gathers her gear and begins to stalk off to work. "Wait!", calls Bana, "We have to talk!" We have to talk. That's a woman's line. No man, in the history of full-blooded manliness, has ever uttered those words. Try to imagine John Wayne saying they have to talk, perhaps going deeper into introspection. "We have to talk. I feel -- kind of -- all empty inside when you're -- not with me. Are we drifting apart?"The tall, handsome, soft spoken, clearly heterosexual Eric Bana is every woman's dream mate -- except for one thing. He can't bring money with him from wherever he's been before. McAdams' family is rich, judging from the very formal wedding ceremony and its accouterments. It had a band and everyone was in evening clothes. I went through a wedding too, but it was under a plastic arch festooned with plastic flowers and cob webs.She's rich, but he's poor. The dream mate must be rich, if he's not going to be a poor genius. The movie solves this by having Bana memorize a winning lottery number and winning five million bucks. Problem solved, except for that nettlesome business about the miscarriages.I didn't really watch it until the end because I did some time traveling myself and saw her beaming over the cooing baby she held in her arms. Whether Bana was still there or not, I couldn't tell. The vision, like the movie, was turgid.