The Time Traveler's Wife

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in The Time Traveller's Wife

The long awaited film adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s 2003 book, The Time Traveler’s Wife, has finally been released a year after the original proposed date.  The tale is of Henry who, due to a genetic disorder, time travels when stressed but manages to find the love of his life in Claire, an artist.

Henry first meets Claire on one of his time travelling jaunts when he is thirty-eight and she a mere six years old.  After meeting a number of times throughout Claire’s youth, the adult Claire then meets the adult Henry for the first time, although he is still too young to have technically met her yet.  From this point on they develop an adult relationship that is often marred by Henry’s pesky ability to disappear at any given moment.

The movie focuses mainly on the love element of the original story and although the time travel does definitely get looked at, it doesn’t have the same magic as the book.  What was, in the novel, an entanglement of two peoples lives which develops into a deep love comes across as a thirty-eight year old grooming a six year old in the film version.  Not really the basis for two people to become soul mates and especially as all this is held together with a slightly too loud, cheesy, orchestral, romance soundtrack.

Eric Bana (Henry) and Rachel McAdam (Claire) haven’t got the greatest chemistry, either:  McAdam spends the most of the film mooning at the camera with a smug smile or looking vaguely upset when things don’t stay rosy.  Bana is equally inanimate and just seems perturbed throughout.  Bana redeems himself slightly due to his character’s inability to take clothes or possessions with him when he time travels.  Ergo, there are plenty of shots of him naked from the back, which isn’t wholly unpleasant.

As the original story is so complex, even without additional back story lines they have omitted for the film, the characters are never really developed properly which makes it difficult at times to care about what is happening to them. The Time Traveler’s Wife as a film isn’t entirely awful but is definitely a romantic chick flick (think The Notebook rather than Pretty Woman or Dirty Dancing) and lacks the depth and imagination of the novel.

My advice is as follows: If you haven’t read the book and are intrigued by the film, read the book.  If you’ve read the book and are intrigued by the film, don’t bother.  The book is brilliant and intricate; it isn’t all schmaltzy and corny (like the film version). If I could travel back in time - I’d stop the film ever being made.

The Time Traveler's Wife is on at Broadway until Thursday 27 August 2009.

The Time Traveler's Wife  movie website






 

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