The Time Traveler's Wife

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Average Customer Rating:	3.5
Release Date:	2010-02-09
Publisher:	New Line
Actors:	Rachel McAdams; Eric Bana; Arliss Howard; Ron Livingston
Aspect ratio:	2.35:1
Audience rating:	PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Format:	Color; Dolby; DVD; Widescreen; Subtitled; NTSC
Language:	Unknown: English; Subtitled: English; Subtitled: Spanish;
Weight:	0.15 pounds

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Product description

Lose yourself in timeless love with this gloriously romantic story of the journey of two hearts. Artist Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams of The Notebook) shares a deep emotional bond with Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana of The Other Boleyn Girl), a handsome librarian who travels involuntarily through time. Knowing they can be separated without warning, Clare and Henry treasure the moments they have together, imbuing them with the yearning and passion of two people imprisoned by time…and set free by love. Based on the #1 bestseller, The Time Traveler's Wife weaves together destiny and devotion, past and future to turn an extraordinary love into an extraordinary love story.

A genuinely old-fashioned Hollywood romance with a science fiction angle, The Time Traveler's Wife stars Eric Bana as Henry DeTamble, a Chicago librarian with a genetic disorder causing him to travel through time involuntarily. The screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (My Life), based on a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, incorporates some of those crazy paradoxes that are a part of time-travel fiction, but without beating one over the head. Take Henry's introduction to his future wife, Clare (Rachel McAdams), who tells him they've already met even though they haven't actually met. Brain teasers, however, are not what The Time Traveler's Wife is about. In a quite haunting way, the story really concerns what it means to know and love someone at every phase of his or her life. The fact that Henry's life, from Clare's perspective, is hardly linear--he can disappear and turn back up again at different ages--means that she must cherish what is essential about him. Which doesn't mean the couple is immune to periods of unhappiness, including a painful sequence about trying to bear a child--perhaps a child that might also carry the time-traveling gene.

While there is nothing particularly exciting stylistically about The Time Traveler's Wife, in many ways it has the simple charms and clear emotions of a 1940s weepie assigned by a studio to one of its journeyman, contract directors. (The film was directed by Flightplan's Robert Schwentke.) A couple of supporting players, Arliss Howard (as Henry's father) and Ron Livingston (as Henry's friend), provide even more reason to recommend this movie as a satisfying experience. --Tom Keogh

Customer reviews

« WTH did I just watch? »

Time travel should be intriguing--not goofy. A genetic disorder that causes involuntary time travel, whereby the traveler arrives in the past, or future, in his birthday suit, and he has no control over how long he stays? Plus said traveler must resort to breaking and entering to find clothes for his person, ticking off countless property owners and law enforcement personnel.

Like I said, goofy. Pass the Pepcid.

Thus we have the silly mess that is THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. A confused-looking Eric Bana is the time traveler, a mild-mannered Chicago librarian who turns into a WWF brawler when he has to go find something to wear. His "disorder" supposedly is beyond his control--he doesn't know when he'll disappear to travel in time, nor how long he'll be gone--yet at one point he tells his future wife, six at the time, the exact day he'll be back so that she may leave some of her father's clothes in the bushes for him.

This thing is more uneven than my latest P&L statement.

At the center of this silliness is a love story--the marriage of the time traveler and his starry-eyed wife (Rachel McAdams). It goes without saying his popping in and out of her life produces considerable strain on the relationship. A missed Christmas here, a zany wedding there, an image of him fatally wounded in the hallway for melodramatic effect, and that pretty much sums it up. McAdams's character exhibits the patience of Job, which sets a good example for anyone wanting to watch the spectacle that is THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE. Be prepared to be dazed, confused. . .and bored.
--D. Mikels

Rating: (2 out of 5) @ 2010-09-02

« Not really much sci fi, but a solid character study romance »

"The Time Traveler's Wife" takes a simple approach to a time travel gimmick, and uses it to explore a very unique character study. Essentially, a boy learns that he travels in time when an older version of himself shows up at a traumatic moment to explain to him what is going on. Through his life, he is unable to control the mechanism of his time trips, which happen at random and often inconvenient moments.

In the process, as a young man our time traveling hero meets a little girl on a solo picnic. Over the years of her childhood and teenage years he appears several times, and she of course develops a crush on him. When they finally encounter each other as young adults of about the same age, they fall in love and marry. The movie's mechanism has two characters encountering each other almost randomly at various ages of the two people. This is a unique concept and was very interesting.

Complexities arise when it turns out that his time traveling curse is of genetic origin, and attempts at having a child result in unexplained miscarriages, and concomitant pressure on their relationship.

I found this to be a very sweet story. It promotes the interest of the viewer without the overly dramatic devices that most movies have to resort to. Tension is provided almost solely by the consequences of unexpected time travel incidents, rather than through character conflict. Although there is some character conflict, it is really minimal. There is a very simple story, a very simple romantic relationship, yet a very compelling movie.

Rating: (4 out of 5) @ 2010-08-30

« I wish Einstein had watched this with me »

THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, something of an irritating borefest, is an obligation we had to address sooner or later--fulfilling the promise to review all time travel movies of interest. A bad movie can still be "of interest".

Firstly, it can be said that this film treats time travel in a rather blasé fashion: it's a genetic disease here, somehow related to epilepsy. Of course the poor bastard time traveler Henry (Eric Bana, miraculously though not in-every-scene freshly shaved) won't learn this til late in life. That is just one of the bits of tomfoolery this film will throw at you. You are expected to swallow all this, thank you very little, without protest.

Well, it can't be all bad, and it isn't. Henry's eternal love Clare (young Jennifer Garner lookalike Rachel McAdams) seems to be the main focal point of his travels into the past, which we see only in hashed-up bits though it occurs constantly. There is one single fascinating line in this film: that time travel disease is event-related, thus gravity-related. I'd never heard that proposed in any story before. Though Henry travels to the future, we see only a scene or two of that. I will not spoil what he sees. However, it amounts to relatively little.

What I have told my students, my wife and my ever-more-quantum-curious little brother about time travel is that one should forget about it, lest one go completely round the twig. If you spend a second applying physics in either the Einsteinian or Heisenbergian modes, you'll miss this snorefest. And my goodness, who'd want to miss something like a solid 25 minutes total screen time of Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams making love?!

In case you want some idea of quality: this film was produced by Brad Pitt and directed by a nobody German director, Robert Schwentke. The cinematography such as it is seems rather clever, and based on the work here, I'd expect big things in the future from director Schwentke.

All in all, I'd say don't really expect anything from this almost-B-quality film. Use the "generous" B-movie mentality if you see it. Otherwise, buy THE TOMORROW MAN (see my review--you'll like that film a lot more).

Rating: (2 out of 5) @ 2010-08-29

« Time traveler's wife »

Blu-Ray in great shape. Fast delivery. What more would a buyer want? Will do business again with seller.

Rating: (5 out of 5) @ 2010-08-09

« A HIT OR A MISS? »

From what I'd been hearing THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE was a must see movie. I thought often about purchasing the book, and reading it first. I thought often about seeing the movie. My busy life didn't allow me to get to the movie theater, and the stack of unread books I have kept me from purchasing the book. Besides, I'm growing leery of reading a book prior to a movie. At least right before I know a movie is coming out, and it's in book form. When a book is so fresh in your mind, and the movie makes some major changes, and or leave some amazing parts out, its' hard to take. It's a whole other circumstance when I've read the book, and some time later, usually years; it comes out in movie form. I then HAVE to see it...if the book was good, of course.

While at the library the other day, I spotted THE TIME TRAVERL'S WIFE and didn't think twice about grabbing it. That very night I watched it.

After seeing the movie, though I know books are ALWAYS better, I'm glad I didn't purchase the book and read it. I believe I would have been thoroughly confused. But more than that I was a little mystified of what the story clearly missed in my eyes.

Why was he traveling back in time?

The movie was good in that it kept you interested. The acting was great. I even cried, yet I felt I was cheated. Cheated out of knowing the meaning to his travels. Why the author didn't make that know is beyond me. Or maybe it's me. Maybe I missed something. I just feel that if there was a clear reason for his travel, the story could have been hugely powerful; instead it left me wondering what'd it all mean. Why...

I'll still rate this movie high, and tell others that it was a good movie...just not great. Not great because the author missed their chance to make it great in my eyes. What a shame. But it was a unique romance if nothing else.

Maybe it's just writer in me.

Rating: (4 out of 5) @ 2010-08-06

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