The Time Traveler's Wife Movie Review: "Time Warping" Love and Destiny

The Time Traveler's Wife takes the story of a couple who is led into the grandeur and sadness of life and the mystery of time. With its own mix of drama, romance, and science-fiction, is it really worth your time?

When watching this film, the very first thing to do is suspend your disbelief. In such a genre fiction offer, it is a sci-fi date flick where the nature of its illogical plot is essential to its very own provisions about the exploration of relationships. It can be a picturesque, emotional journey working out as an elegy to love, fate, loss, and free will. Or it can be a trying hard romantic melodrama that disappears from the viewer's mind as soon as the credits roll.

Everything is actually dependent on mood, taste, and preference.

This movie adaptation from an Audrey Niffenegger novel obeys no dramatic rules or narrative logic. It has some psychological dissonances that can only make things work if the illogical nature of the plot heaving away at space/time conundrums finds its wavelength through the right audience... those who can find a charming, if mildly depressing fantasy, and consider it a full experience that tugs at the heartstrings beyond the preposterous story. It seems to peg around the combined elements of the sweepingly romantic time travel movie like Somewhere in Time and the supernatural swoon charisma of Ghost. Add up its old-fashioned treatment with a fairytale-ish glow, this thought-provoking melodramatic fantasy about what it takes for two people to overcome all the obstacles in their path together mainly works around the heavy emotional tones. And all these create a deeper texture on the movie's life, love, and destiny questions.

Time travel is an interesting and intriguing plot device. The characters' unusual circumstances enable quite a bit of humor and mystery while surrendering to a far-fetched concept to reward the audience with a lush, high-gloss weepie by its end. The film stars Eric Bana as the Chicago librarian Henry DeTamble, a man suffering from gene anomaly that causes him to involuntarily time travel. And yet, the defective gene doesn't prevent him from meeting his wife played by Rachel McAdams as Clare Abshire - with the two living the supposedly ideal marriage of genuine lovers. The complications his time travels create for his marriage is what emerges as a story of living such a life of stolen instances and valued moments.

The Time Traveler's Wife tries to play itself out as a serious and heart-rending love story filling the emotional suitcase with pseudo-poetic significance. The film moves fast, as though to distract the audience from the convoluted storyline's shortcomings and the nearly total absence of logic in its plot... and such make the viewer ask about the actual story making sense or not. The loose ends are even left untied that making the film really work is more than just the audience embracing the magic of its concept and its escapist date fare value; it should mainly deliver as an engaging cinematic offer with first-rate treatment and spellbinding storytelling than just prioritizing its commercial value above everything else.

The strength of the film is the emotional bearing that makes it more moving by its latter half. It could have benefited well if director Robert Schwentke further explores the romantic elements and levels up the story development to more imaginative heights. The picturesque look and fairytale sound makes it a pretty interesting escapist fare on the surface. And for viewers aching for a romantic drama that leaves them emotionally, honorably exhausted, the escapism holds them towards the flick's enveloping emotional grasp until its tear-jerking conclusion.

The soundtrack adds a great deal to the movie. It is interesting to note that it is already quite rare to see such an intimate love story with old fashioned treatment outside the demands for cinematic themes as comics, graphic novels, superheroes, spoofs, historical highlights, futuristic ideas, apocalyptic situations, sell-out gags, and "what if" issues these days (adding to its kind of charm for its preferred audience).

The Time Traveler's Wife moves with a sort of a stately but confusing pace, mood and era. Its "bound by realism storyline flourished with fantastic elements" still depicts an unimpressive stature in its tone and actuality. This reflects on the acting performances which become a combination of the oblivious, touching, and confused. In its choice of decisions about what to keep and what to leave out from the book, it seems to cram too much into the runtime and it loses the elegance of the novel along the way. Not to say that I have read the novel already, but it just shows in the way the storytelling flows in it's kind of choppy plotpoints. And more than just the insights about love, destiny, and time, the audience finds it hard to directly relate to the film's characters and situations (amidst the suspension of disbelief).

Many of the long spans of time passing between lines seem to have been inexpertly translated that they almost make sense, but not quite. And with such little regard for establishing character or letting a moment play itself out, the movie gets weaker. It becomes even more convoluted and far-fetched by the last third of the story. Perhaps, the book fills in the blanks in emotional beats and plotting as the story strives for meaning in its affecting allegory about a love that persists beyond the mundane timeline.

At first, it felt like Bana as the man with the time-traveling gene is a miscast. But after a while, he starts to blend into the character. He and McAdams grow to become easy enough on the eyes to distract from the script's many plot holes. Somehow, they compensate on the vague level of emotional investment to make the film still work on a certain light. Though not consistent all throughout, they still develop some charmingly emotional moments together. They make a great looking couple with characters able to genuinely care about each other.

There are notably touching scenes including the one where Henry sees his mother at the subway. The climax scene of Henry's life with his loving family going to the fireworks and hunting scenes are well-mounted. The sell-out treatment on the ending is a bummer. The romance is then deprived of an ending that feels earned.

While the movie makes for a decent enough date movie, this could have been a much better film. Nevertheless, it's still an escapist romance for its target market. It's best not to overthink things to make it a more acceptable time filler. And maybe die-hard romantics won't really mind... But those seeking a higher level of viewing experience would feel like they rather disappear and time travel somewhere else than sit through it.

Overall, The Time Traveler's Wife is not something to rush out to see right away. Perhaps, it is something to consider watching during some free time and/or when on the mood for such a theme and genre.