The Time Traveler's Wife

Rachel McAdams in The Time Traveler's Wife

Details

Directed by Robert Schwentke. Starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. Rated PG-13.

Related Content

• In The Vow, Rachel McAdams gets the sense knocked out of her
  February 16, 2012
• To the Wonder Is Gorgeous, Ridiculous
  May 2, 2013
• Deadfall: Fantastic Ensemble Cast in a Dull Movie
  December 20, 2012
• The Lucky One: No Chemistry in the Notebook-Lite
  April 19, 2012
• The Avengers: Superheroes Bump Superegos, Things Go Boom
  May 3, 2012

More About

• Eric Bana
• The Time Traveler's Wife
• Rachel McAdams
• Movie Stars
• Celebrity News

A dapper (mostly) contemporary costume drama, The Time Traveler's Wife is abundantly interior-decorated in vintage rococo. Eric Bana, to his credit, continues to wear the outfits picked out for him remarkably well. The hip-bougie upholstery even covers the band at the fairy-tale wedding, playing "Love Will Tear Us Apart." It's not really love, though, that complicates things between Clare (Rachel McAdams) and Henry (Bana), but rather Henry's tendency to inconveniently melt in and out of the present, finding himself unceremoniously stranded somewhere in time, naked. The "absentee time-traveling partner" is an open invitation to apply your own metaphor — I favor a time-travel-equals-chronic-blackout-drinking reading, but it's elastic enough for whatever. Wife recalls a few other timeline-tangled romances, not least the telescoped lifelong love of 1948's Portrait of Jennie — but where Jennie favored a "poetic" logic (and no-strings-attached romance), Wife forgoes any sense of mystery, dealing in the daily difficulties of synchronizing schedules, doctors' appointments, vasectomies, pregnancies, and meeting friends and parents (all crowding the movie and further diluting the already-limited rapport of the central lovers). This thoroughness might impress fans of the best-seller source novel, but will disappoint anyone looking for transport from a movie — being a time traveler's wife, it turns out, is mostly a drag.