The Time Traveler’s Wife

Movie: The Time Traveler’s Wife

I saw it on: August 20, 2009

Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Arliss Howard, Ron Livingston

Genre: Romance, Drama, Science Fiction

Synopsis:  Henry  (Eric Bana) is a research librarian in Chicago with an unusual – top say the least – affliction.  He travels back and forth through time uncontrollably. He is in his “present” one moment and the next moment can disappear while he is re-appearing 10 or 20 years in the past or in the future.  His stay typically lasts a matter of hours, at which point he pops back to where when he came from.  A side effect that complicates things is that his clothes do not travel with him (think Arnold in Terminator); so he gets really good at scrounging up clothes in a hurry.

Eric first meets Clare (Rachel McAdams) when she is 6 and he is in his 30’s or 40’s.  The movie follows the relationship of Henry and Clare from the time Clare is 6 until she is an adult.  To say more would be giving too much away.

My two cents:  I did not like it as much as I thought I would.  I fell in love with Rachel McAdams in The Notebook and Red-Eye.  While I liked her performance, I did not think it measured up to those two movies.  It also took me a while to realize that it was futile to try to come up any logical rationale for the way Eric flits about through time.  You just have to accept that it happens and he can’t really control it.  And don’t waste your time worrying about paradoxes.  Once you accept the time travel, it is kind of fun to see him vanish – leaving behind a pile of clothes – at some really inopportune times and places; and to appear (naked) at some even more inopportune places.  I think it would have been worth ten or fifteen minutes to show how Eric learned to live with this “affliction” as a child.

Without wanting to give anything away, I did really enjoy the ending and how he and his family dealt with what happens.