The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Director: Robert Schwentke
Writer: Screenplay: Bruce Joel Rubin Novel: Audrey Niffenegger
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana
Genre: Drama, Romance, Fantasy

The Time Traveler's Wife is a romantic drama take on the everlasting holy grail of science fiction, time traveling. The engaging and original about this movie is the focus they've chosen. It's not about changing the world, accomplishing magnificent things or discover treasures. It's about how it effects those close to a time traveler and the downsides of involuntary time travels.

Like most dealing with time travel, also this movie has a couple of rookie mistakes dealing with the subject. It really doesn't matter, but it's one of the reasons what starts out as a possibly magnificent movie, ends on an entertaining enough, but not extraordinary in any ways, movie.

It really doesn't matter because this is a fresh take on a subject dealt with as long as mankind have done fiction. As long as you accept the way he time travels, like you got to accept the Sci-Fi or fantasy part of any story basing itself on those genres, this movie spends its first two thirds doing a lot of correct choices. It's its major strength. Unfortunately I feel they did another rookie mistake wrapping it up a little to quickly. If they dared to extend them self a little more they could quite possibly have managed an epic story.

There's some moral questions to be asked about the choices taken by the time traveler, like it almost always is with the subject. I'm not so concerned with most of them, but there's especially one that needs to be asked. It is eventually, but I feel they didn't dare to take in on strongly enough. That's also one of the reasons I've had to slash my rating on this movie starting out so promising.

I really want to say more on a couple of subjects, but like always I do my very best to avoid spoilers to not ruin the experience for those reading this prior to watching it them self.

I'll rather take the time to say I think Rachel McAdams does another magnificent job. I've been impressed by her before, and this is most definitely her movie. Eric Bana is doing quite well, but to me McAdams' acting far surpasses his. Ron Livingston is also excellent in his supporting role. Brooklynn Proulx, Hailey McCann and Tatum McCann is also convincingly.

This movie is fresh and sets out to tell an epic tale, but they chicken out and rails them self into 107 minutes. If they dared taking their time with the final third part of the story, like they did with the first two thirds, this might easily have been the story they probably aimed to deliver. It's still worth the time, but it's always sad to see such potential go to waste.