I love Rachel McAdams, I love her. I could just leave the review at that because, well that's just really important.
Henry is only a child the first time he time travels, and it's during the car crash that kills his mother. The rest of the movie is spent trying to avoid time traveling to much, as well as making his to be wife Clare fall in love with him before he meets her. Sound a little confusing? It kinda is. To try and describe it would be to much, what with him traveling so much and being mostly unaware of what his future self is doing he discovers things that he's done when he's older, but happened in the past. Clare does fall in love with him, and he for her, and since she's the one that tells him that they meet and fall in love when she sees him at the library, it makes you wonder who chose who. If he meets her as a young man, but doesn't know her, but she knows the future him, then where did it start. In that way it seems they were meant to be together from the start, a sort of "chicken or egg first" scenario.
As a couple they actually deal with his involuntary traveling in much the same way as if he traveled for business excessively, or had to be away from home a lot. As well as problems conceiving children. All of their problems stem from his "problem" but are real world enough that they are actually the problems that almost all couples have to go through.
Since they deal with so many real world issues it's easy to become emotionally drawn in and possibly tear up a bit, I did. McAdams and Bana are a good match, I fully believed that they could be a real world couple, and there were so many points in the movie that they would look at each other and I saw love in their eyes.
Henry for most of the movie is beat down, and run ragged from the traveling. Like gravity he is drawn down. "Down" being important moments in his life: His mother dying, his wedding, his future home, etc. So since he is drawn to moments that could possibly hurt, such as watching his mother die hundreds of times, and being powerless to stop it he has become understandably bitter. So when he meets Clare, and she is already in love with him its a great juxtaposition of her giddiness and his deep sadness.
They shot in Chicago, and do a great job showing off the city and its landmarks. In that same note the Cinematography is invisible, it's not bad, but it also doesn't stick out as being really good. With a film that is so drenched in drama to begin with it's fine to just let the story push itself along and not worry to much about the shots. But like I said, it looked good, very clean, and very well done.
In the same vein as a film like "Butterfly Effect" we take the usual time traveling gimmick and throw it away and start with a blank slate, and really think about what it would mean to travel through time such as this. Not for gain, not to change the future or past, but just trying to survive and get home again. Since when he disappears he does so naked he ends up some where else naked not knowing the date or time and having to quickly find clothes so then he can fit in.
I had been looking forward to when this came out and just didn't get a chance to see it in the theatre, to busy, and it strangely didn't play at many places. Which that is a complaint for another post. This film might not be for everyone, it's not the cool time traveling story, and is mostly a romance and drama. I felt it was very well done, and a rather touching story. There were some unanswered questions, and some not fully formed characters that I wish they had fleshed out more and added more time to the movie, but I could see people getting bored. I still think another hour would have been just fine, I was intrigued and pulled in the entire time.
8/10 stars. I could see myself owning this.
Director: Robert Schwentke
Starring: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams, Ron Livingston, Arliss Howard, Brooklynn Proulx
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