Fridae

When Audrey Niffenegger romance novel The Time Traveler’s Wife became a publishing sensation in late 2003, you couldn’t hop on the subway without seeing someone (usually female) reading it. Every literary fag got a raving earful from his fag hag about how good it is, and every bookstore put up dozens of copies on their most visible shelves.

It’s no surprise then that romance junkies anticipate this one the way teenage girls look forward to the Twilight saga, and kids get excited over Harry Potter movies. But now that the movie is here, we’re sad to have to tell you that it’s a bit of a disappointment. What worked well on paper hasn’t really translated into screen magic. 

The novel tells a strange but touching story of a woman (Rachel McAdams) and a man (Eric Bana) who love each other, but are destined to be together and apart at the same time. While she lives like any other person, he suffers from a rare genetic abnormality that causes him to make uncontrollable leaps through time. Sometimes he goes back in time, and other times, he jumps forward into the future. 

Sure, the story is preposterous, but the novel work because of its convincing and compelling first-person perspectives. The two characters’ struggles in keeping their love alive found resonance among many female readers, who enjoyed vicarious thrill of being in a very complex and very romantic relationship for some 10 to 14 hours.

The movie, on the other hand, has a hard task of crystallizing all this into 2 hours. Mostly, it relies on Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana’s expressive faces to articulate (and condense) most of those complex emotions. And unfortunately, as earnest and talented as they are, neither actor can compel us into believing that any of this stuff is actually happening. 

Because of its many plot points, the movie moves relatively quickly and we never quite get a good handle on how the two characters truly feel about their situation. If The Curious Case of Benjamin Button requires depth, character development and a 3-hour runtime to make us believe the fantastical premise, so does The Time Traveller’s Wife. Time, as it turns out, is an enemy of the characters, and the moviegoer.

Well, watch the movie anyway. If you walk out of cinema feeling moved but vaguely dissatisfied, make your way to the bookstore.