The Time Traveler's Wife Movie Blurb by Shale August 16, 2009 Wow, two great sci-fi movies in one weekend. First District 9 and now this. Like The Lake House, this is actually a romantic drama within a sci-fi story, sort of a double-feature for me. Here is the premise. Henry (Eric Bana) is a librarian in Chicago with a peculiar problem. He occasionally fades from one time of his life and appears in another. BTW, Bana has a really nice bod and you get to see a lot of it because just like The Terminator you can't move thru time with clothes on. So, Henry ends up appearing naked in another place and time and quickly has to get clothes and often is on the run. One day at the library a young woman comes in, Clare (Rachel McAdams) whom Henry has not yet met, claiming that she has known him all her life. Yep, the future Henry has been visiting the girl but the present Henry isn't aware of it yet. Somewhere in Time Two Lovers Meet Confusing? It could be because there are flashbacks to the past from the future, or flash forwards from the past or present to the future. It is out of Henry's control but he usually appears in the same locations of his lifetime. Despite all this disappearing and reappearing in time, the story was easy to follow, and had some humorous moments such as when an older, greying Henry has to stand in for his younger, vanished self. From their meeting in the library the two share their lives and eventually get married, sharing Henry's strange affliction. It is a story of love and destiny and of accepting differences in a lover. Time Traveler and His New Wife There was one scene in the movie that was a little unnerving, when he goes back to meet Clare as a little girl. I mean, picture the scene; an eight-year-old girl alone in a field next to the woods having a make-believe picnic and a naked man is hiding in the bushes, asking her to throw him the blanket. Scary ain't it? But it worked out OK and he convinced her that he was a time traveler and had her leave clothes in the woods in anticipation of his next visit. I really enjoyed this movie but when getting pix from Rottentomatoes.com, found out that I am part of a mere 40% of reviewers who did. Some of the reviewers blatantly violate one of my movie watching axioms; that a movie is not a book or a play. I am lucky because I went to see the movie and was totally unaware of the novel written by Audrey Niffenegger. She was inspired to write the novel because of her own failed relationships and there are some serious scenes here where our couple is not so blissful with the additional stresses of his continued disappearance. I think the temporal paradox worked here. I doubt it was a real concern to the novelist, but it seemed to me that theories of time travel were adhered to. It was admitted that he could not affect the outcome of his personal history by going further back in time so the timeline was protected. The feeling was actually that the timeline was predestined and he just skipped back and forth in the unfolding of his own life. I don't know if I will get to see this in theater again (I traded a pint of blood for a movie pass) but I definitely plan to get the DVD in a few months.
It was a good concept and a nice story, but as a movie it was weak. I'll probably read the book and hope for the best. It just felt like the people were making decisions with sporadic reasons, and there was no room for character development. It felt like the storyline was pulling the characters along instead of them moving it forward and through. Although that could have been some comparison to the structure of their lives and how very out of control of it they are because of his "gene" thing.
