Scribe & Green on the BIG screen

There are far too many people out there writing “reviews of movie-films & articles about them with absolutely no clue what the hell they’re talking about." Here are 2 more of them! (Well, one of us knows what the h___ we're talking about, but we'll leave it up to you to decide who that is...) Ultimately, can two people as opposite as Scribe and Green agree on anything?? That's where the fun begins. Won't you join us? (Every now and then we'll add a guest review, just for kicks.)

Saturday, July 31, 2010

The Time Traveler's Wife

GREEN'S "NEXT TIME BRING ME SOME CLOTHES" REVIEW:

For most of her childhood, Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams) has known Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) as a friend and a man who comes in and out of her life at the most unexpected times. Now, as an adult, Clare discovers that she loves him and wants to spend her life with him. Against the advice of her friend Gomez (Ron Livingston), Clare and Henry get married. They live as happily as can be, considering Henry's "condition" which sometimes is hard for Clare to deal with emotionally.

I've always been fascinated with stories that have to do with time travel, in some fashion, and the various ways to accomplish it. In this movie, the questions of how and why Henry DeTamble travels through time are never discussed, dissected or analyzed in any great detail and it is not essential to the story, only that he does it and therefore becomes an obstacle to be overcome. Though I do like the idea that if time travel were possible, only living, animate objects would be allowed (as in the Terminator films.)

What this film is really about is how two people who love each other deal with difficulty and stress that any worthwhile relationship entails. In addition to all of the usual married stress, Henry's penchant for random and uncontrolled time travel adds another layer of problems.

Because one element of the story concerns time travel, the non linear format that the story takes works well, primarily because the story is told from both Clare and Henry's viewpoints at different times.

Rachel McAdams is captivating as Clare and gives a sparkling performance. She displays a good on screen chemistry with Eric Bana, who handles his role well. Ron Livingston (of Office Space fame) is excellent as the best friend of Clare and then of Henry too.

I had no problem with the direction of Robert Schwentke, meaning he did a good job of getting out of the way and letting his actors act. Bruce Joel Rubin did an admirable job adapting the novel into the screenplay, which never becomes too cliche or overly sappy.

As McAdams and Rubin point out in the lone DVD extra feature, there were challenges in adapting a 546 page novel into a roughly 107 page screenplay. McAdams stated love for the story and her desire to play the part of Clare comes through in her performance and is one of the reasons why I got my hands on a copy of the novel to read one of these days.

I watched this movie for the first time with my daughter and we both enjoyed it. When the price comes down to under $10, I can see myself eventually adding this movie to my DVD collection.


***½ out of *****

SCRIBE'S WERE WE WATCHING THE SAME MOVIE? REVIEW:

It’s so easy to dismiss The Time Traveler’s Wife as a useless, thinly plotted, emotionally manipulative chick flick...so let’s get to it, shall we?

What we have here is another in a strong of superficially rendered novels daring to utilize scientific speculation as a mere plot device for yet another banal tale of undying love. And if that’s not enough of a yawn-inducing concept, there’s the movie.

Frankly, too much has been made of the theory of pedophilia in this film. While it is true that the character of Henry (Eric Bana) appears to Clare (Rachel McAdams looking sumptuous as usual) when she’s a child to tell her they’ll meet again someday, anyone with the tiniest knowledge of time paradox theory would know he’s there because he has no choice. Much like in the vastly superior Somewhere in Time, what has gone before can only happen based on what happens next.

Henry and Clare fall in love and eventually marry but it’s a tough arrangement, considering he is unstuck in time due to a car accident in his childhood...yes, a crash causes him to...jump around....in time. Hmm, it’s even stupider when I see it in print.

Naturally, Claire is the perfect woman because the novel was written by a woman and she sticks by her unstuck man as he appears and reappears throughout her lifetime, sometimes looking older, sometimes younger.

The acting in the film is its saving grace. Both leads are better than the mediocre material and their chemistry feels genuine. The situations range from dull to interesting to riveting, like life, and that would be fine with a stronger central concept.

Don’t expect much in the way of philosophical speculation in this Harlequin Romance of a movie. Never do we get an answer to the conundrum created by Henry’s contacting Claire as a child nor any plausible theory as to why a car accident...A CAR ACCIDENT...causes him to jump around all Quantum Leap style.

Oh, and of course there’s a touching ending involving a child at the end because the female audience hasn’t been properly manipulated until that takes place. A pile of melodramatic rubbish masquerading as more.


** out of *****

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009, PG-13, 107 minutes), starring Rachel McAdams, Eric Bana, Ron Livingston, Arliss Howard and Steven Tobolowski. Based on the novel by Audrey Niffenegger, screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin and directed by Robert Schwentke.

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2 Comments:

At 27 April, 2013 05:06 , Blogger RobIII said...

This is one of the best movies I have every seen, based on even a better book. Yes, it is a time travel story, but though it is a romance story as well it is told on the level of Mythology. Clare is Penelope, and Henry is a modern day Odysseus that is always traveling and trying to return to his Ithaca. What's more what if we knew the time of our death? Would we live and love more intensely? Chicago is a secondary character in this movie. The city if beautiful and if you have never visited -- do so.

 
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