THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE review by Gary Murray

Rachel McAdams is one of the most beautiful women working in film. With her fair skin and bright expressive eyes, she has just the look that makes women like her and men want to know her. Though she has been in different films over the years, probably her biggest success has been with the tear jerker The Notebook. This little flick had a massive box office and moved unit after unit on DVD. It is the kind of film that girls and women watch religiously. It would make sense to go down this path again with the weepy sci-fi drama The Time Traveler's Wife. Think of the exercise as a cross between Slaughter House 5 and Somewhere in Time.

The story is of Henry (Eric Bana) and it starts with his childhood. A tragedy happens and young Henry is instantly pulled out of the bad element and becomes a witness to the carnage. An adult steps from the shadow and tells the young boy that he is Henry as an adult. What the kid has just experienced is his first time jump. The adult Henry convinces the kid that everything will be alright. We fast forward a few years and Claire (Rachel McAdams) is a college student looking for a book. The young library worker is Henry. Claire almost jumps out of her skin on meeting Henry, saying that she has known him for all her life. She briefly explains that she knows that he is a time traveler and has been visiting him for years. Henry is genuinely shocked that this young lady is already a part of a life he knows nothing about. It seems that Henry has no idea where and when the time travel events will happen. Like our hero of Slaughter House he is a man unstuck in time with no idea of how to control his existence.

Thus begins the relationship between our two lovers. We watch Claire who is already in love with Henry fall even deeper. We also see our time traveler Henry go back in time, meeting his future wife and becoming her friend before he becomes her lover. There is the wedding where Henry goes missing in time only to make it back moments later in the regular world but years later in his life. We get to see Henry's parents, an opera singing mother and a violin playing papa. The tragic loss during Henry's childhood haunts all of their lives. Henry also gets to watch his parents from a distance.

We also meet Clair's family which includes a deer hunting daddy. But the bulk of the film is the relationship between our two leads as he seems to disappear at all the wrong times. Theirs is a difficult life with his disability threatening to destroy their love. And it is treated as a disability, a genetic disorder. The idea is more of a plot devise to show star-crossed lovers at a crossroads of time. It becomes comical that every time Henry jumps, he loses all his clothes. This nudity brings about some much needed laughs in the screenplay.



The movie is based on a book that was an international best-seller but a book I had never heard of. I came into this film with little preconceived notions of how the story should have been told. Director Robert Schwentke captures the emotion I'm sure every traveling salesman feels, that the real aspects of life are drifting by as he goes this path alone. We see how two people can love even with the greatest of odds against them. But, without giving anything away, the ending felt dishonest--almost a cop out to what had been laid down in the almost two hours before it. What may have worked in a novel feels forced on the screen, even with no true way to deliver a more satisfying ending. On a side note, director Schwentke gives us a very interesting but simple way to show a man going through time.

But it is the performances that make or break a romance. Our two leads are believable as friends and lovers. Eric Bana has shown over and over that he can carry a movie. This turn gives him another feather in his acting cap. Being a romantic lead guarantees return visits by female patrons, whatever the next film may be.

The Time Traveler's Wife only works because every lens in Hollywood is madly in love with Rachel McAdams. She never looks anything other than perfect in every film she has ever been in. Here she goes from the dream girlfriend to the dream wife without every missing any beat of her character. There is just some aspect of her that makes the camera fall foe her and it never puts her in a bad light. Without her in this role, this flick could have been a disaster.

While not a great film, The Time Traveler's Wife is a definite "two boxes of Kleenex" flick. Women everywhere are going to have a major cry in theaters around the country, which is the intention of the filmmakers.

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