The Time Traveler’s Wife
Henry Detamble (Eric Bana) travels a lot. In fact, he never seems to stay in the same place for more than a plot development. This is the basic story for The Time Traveler’s Wife, A quirky, overly dramatized story that gets genuinely serious near the end.
Henry first acquires his power by getting hit on the head in a traffic accident as a young boy, while singing with his mother in their car. He disappears from inside the car only to reappear on the roadside. He is comforted by his older self (who covers him a blanket, since all ‘Henrys’ travel in the nude) and together, they watch as the accident unfolds to its tragic end. The young Henry is told he will not know where or when he will travel to.
Then, the older Henry vanishes. We meet his future wife Claire, played by Rachel McAdams. He doesn’t know her yet, but she knows him. Our Henry is unaware that she has been meeting with her Henry since she was a child when he appeared in her backyard, and her Henry then told her what would happen when they next met.
The sweeping romantic entrance of Ms. McAdams’ character suggests that the author is trying to create a grand melodrama. However, due to its weak characterizations and somewhat plodding storyline, it feels completely overdone.
Now, I am guessing the melodrama is a consequence of the obvious female audience the film is trying to reach, but gender should never come into play when creating works of art. It should always be about the work first and everything else second. However, this movie is just trash, and the worst kind of trash too—classy, the kind that does its best to convince you with vibrant flashes of color, beautifully composed scenes and sweeping camera shots, that it’s more than your typical Hollywood “chick flick.” This is itself a misinformed statement, since the recent (500) Days of Summer could be conceived as such, and told a much more honest and simplified story, even though it was basically a Hollywood movie. Here, all you’re left with is a bland copy of Gone with the Wind.
However, this is not an honest portrayal of anything. Not even good sci-fi. I was in agreement when Henry said on their first date, “This was too much.”
The third act is strangely better than the first two, and somewhat involving because we finally see these characters as real people instead of mere chess pieces. Mr. Bana and Ms. McAdams are able to leave some parts of their stereotypes behind, and really let their characters breathe; we the audience are finally right there with them, instead of listening in on the upstairs phone. Henry’s best friend Gomez (Ron Livingston in a noteworth performance) is used wisely as pseudo-comic relief.
Ironically, the only people who give the worst performances are the members of Broken Social Scene. They make a cameo as the wedding band for the leads—coming off as third-rate. They’re the sort of entertainment you would only find if you were at a yuppie bar in the city, thought they were cool and decided to book them only to find out later that they were actually horrible and you were just too drunk to notice.
District 9 • Dolby® Digital surround sound in select theatres • Running Time: 107 Minutes • MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, brief disturbing images, nudity and sexuality. • Distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures