The Time Traveller's Wife

The Time Traveller's Wife is an object lesson in mainstream film-making manipulation. Largely aimed at a female audience of the kind who read magazines, it recalls the kind of mawkishly sentimental movies that Hollywood churned out in the studio era such as It’s A Wonderful Life.

In Jimmy Stewart’s shoes is Eric Bana as Henry a guy who can travel in time apparently due to a genetic disorder but which seems to have been triggered by a car accident when he was five in which his mother, an opera singer, died. Of Course he loved his mother very much. Yada yada, he’s been visiting Clare since she was a six-year old (the film seems oblivious to the questionable device of a man appearing naked in the bushes) but when she (now played by Rachel McAdams) turns up at the Chicago library in which he works, he remembers nothing of her but, of course she’s madly in love with him. Anyway they get married but his constant arbitrary dematerialisations start to get up her nose. She weeps. Then when she gets pregnant the foetus starts time travelling, causing miscarriage after miscarriage.  She weeps some more. Henry keeps bouncing around in time but now for some reason he can remember his visits to her in the past. Needless to say this is all heading to some tragic occurrence but, ultimately, tears of joy. True love lasts forever after all. 

Bana had been turning into something of an action movie man so it is a pleasant change to see him in a softer role, one which he bring off well. McAdams fills the modern day Donna Reed role obligingly but it is a role that could be filled by any number of actresses as well. Both actors deserve credit for keeping straight faces through such evident tosh though I assume that they were well paid for their troubles.

I haven’t read the original novel by Audrey Niffenegger but I assume that it is much more convincing than Bruce Joel Rubin’s script otherwise no-one would have given it the time of day. Robert Schwentke renders it with suitable glossy style (Clare comes from a mega-rich family, Henry cheats at Lotto and gets them a $5million windfall so there’s plenty of tasteful décor on show, she’s an artist, his librarian job evaporates from the plot, so neither work) and given its parameters it is reasonably effective.  One could tears strips off it, endlessly pointing out how it turns every convention into a cliché but what’s the point?  It's intended for audience looking to indulge in a romantic fantasy. If that's not you, stay well away.

 

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