The Time-Traveler's Wife - BD Review
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Page 1 of 3 Warner / 107 Minutes / 2009 / Rated PG-13 / Street Date: February 9, 2010 
Romances and romantic comedies are allowed to be cheesy in more ways than pretty much every other film genre (except for maybe science fiction). They can resort to cliche, they can be plainly and decidedly predictable, they can be exactly the same narratively as any other romance that came before - as a film style, they have the luxury of not having to be provocative in any way to be completely successful. The Time Traveler's Wife is a grand example of this. Does this Eric Bana/Rachel McAdams weepy work as a whole? Sure - it connects the dots in terms of its narrative appropriately. And is it cheesy? Oh, man, is it ever. Again, though, a la the new Nicholas Sparks romantic cinema tearjerkers (see The Notebook), it embraces this cheesiness, knowing that somewhere, somehow, someone is watching it and really getting it.
The story goes a little something like this: Henry (Bana) has had the ability to travel through time since he was a boy. He doesn't know when he's likely to go, he doesn't know when he'll return - all he knows is that a certain points in his life, he disappears into the ether, headed off to a new era. Of course, this does little to quell any heartache that his ladyfriend (McAdams) has about their relationship. How can he raise kids if he disappears every once in a while for unknown periods of time? What about their love - how can she depend on anything in her life if her husband's plight makes him, by his own very nature, a wild card? Herein lies The Time Traveler's Wife's sniffly cheese. There's a legitimately appealing movie in here somewhere - Audrey Niffenegger's novel is probably a read with a bit more meat to it than this cinema adaptation - but more times than not, this romance resorts to lowest-common-denominator dialogue and interaction that keep the film's plot moving, but offer it very little organic substance. Bana and McAdams have solid chemistry together, but director Robert Schwentke doesn't even throw them a bone as far as any earnest connection is concerned: They're romantic cinema cardboard cutouts. That's the thing about these sorts of movies though - if you go into this movie wanting to watch some pretty people kiss and have a good cry while doing it, you're covered. You may not love it, but it'll scratch you where you itch. |
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