There have been lots of romanticism movies where time is buckle , loop or frappéd — from Groundhog Day to Time Traveler ’s Wife . But in the new movie About Time , from Richard Curtis ( Notting Hill ) , the dude has total control over his time - journey , which means that everything give out pretty swimmingly for him . Yawn .
despoiler in the lead …
In cause you were wondering just why the man in movies like the aforementioned Groundhog and Wife never have ascendency over their clip - whappery , About Time provides a reasonably good response : If you could pull strings time with absolute control , and your only goal in life is to find a lady friend and then have a liquid relationship with her , then you ’ll have a pretty light time of it .
In About Time , Tim ( Domnhall Gleeson ) turn 18 and learns a family secret : all of the men in his family can go through prison term . In practice , what this means is that they can leap back to any moment in their own timelines , so that if Tim want to vary something that befall to him two days earlier , he just alternate back two Day and does things differently . He ca n’t actually “ time locomotion , ” strictly speaking — he can just rewind back to an earlier point in his own life , more or less at will .
Tim use this amazing gift to romance and keep Mary , played by Rachel McAdams . And there ’s the chief problem with this film — the family relationship between the two of them does n’t have that much chemistry , nor do they face any veridical challenge as a couple . They get along pretty well from the bit they meet , and they continue to get along pretty well until the end of the film .
In fact , the master setback that Tim encounters is actually more or less contemptuous to his lady friend — he accidentally changes something else in his past , so he does n’t meet Mary after all . And in this revised timeline , Mary ’s dating Rupert , another guy that she met soon after that , and he ’s a total plonker . Tim has to go back a bit sooner in his timeline and meet Mary before she meets Rupert — because Mary ’s so lone and desperate , she ’ll become joined at the hip to the first hombre who shows stake in her , basically .
And it really is dead on target that Curtis is n’t interested in the fair sex in this plastic film — it ’s not just that the cleaning woman ca n’t time travel , it ’s also that they have no personality or interior lives . Besides McAdams ’ character , there ’s Tim ’s sis Kit Kat ( Lydia Wilson ) , who ’s a hot mess — and Tim ’s one attempt to save her is sort of peremptory and gets abandon the moment there ’s a setback . ( He even restores to the timeline , some cruddy injuries she ’s suffer , even though there ’s no reason he ca n’t give up her those . ) This is very much a flick about man ’s feelings and regrets — and women are sort of incidental , not least because you’re able to always run pack around them by changing chronicle over and over .
The weird matter is , About Time is really two dissimilar pic . There ’s the halfhearted love taradiddle , and then there ’s an absolutely smashing father - son story , which should have been the cardinal focusing of the picture show . One wonders if Richard Curtis tried to pitch this as a father - Logos story , only to be told that he ’s know for rom - coms at this point — and thus , he felt obliged to insert a dead fish of a romanticism .
Tim ’s father is played by Bill Nighy , and whenever he ’s on screen the film suddenly becomes magnificent — and the report of Tim and his pappa is actually heartbreaking and fantastic , in on the dot the style that the movie ’s romanticism plot line is n’t .
When the father first order Tim about their shared time - travel ability , the dad cautions him not to utilize it to gain riches or renown — and over the grade of the motion picture , we get to see just how TKTK in reality has used it in his own life : basically , as a way to make every day count as much as possible , and to live with as much joy as possible . And yet , in a gimmick reminiscent of Four Weddings and a Funeral , it turns out that even the cheeseparing - immortality grant by the power to rewind your spirit over and over does n’t have in mind that people deposit around forever — because there are point of accumulation , after all .
Somewhere buried in the goopy mess of About Time is a really beautiful story about cherishing every moment with the multitude you love , and about the fact that we all go back and revisit our pasts ( and mentally rewrite our past , too ) all the fourth dimension . Curtis is seek to say something very profound about our relationship with time — but he gets sidetracked saying something unbelievably empty about the moist - squib relationship between one human race and one char .
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