The Time Traveler's Wife

If you are reading this, then I owe you a thank you. That means that you stuck with me through my Avatar review and decided I was good enough to stick with.

Nothing quite piqued my interest in trailers this year quite as much as The Time Travelers Wife. What really interested me was a relationship between a man and a woman and that they had to spend a lot of the time waiting for each other. I can understand that well, because I was and still am in a long distance relationship for 5 plus years. So, I must say that I was excited to see it.

I finally got around to seeing it just tonight. I must say I was still rather excited to see it, even though we (meaning myself and my girlfriend, Tandra) were going to watch Julie and Julia, but our copy didn’t work (look forward to a Julie and Julia review by the end of the week).

We began it and I was honestly not sure what to think at first. I kind of laughed at the Michael Bay-esque explosion at the very beginning, but I still was insistent at giving it a chance. I kept watching and was already set within the first half hour that I hated it.

I’m not going to lie; the film jumps around more than Henry does. The first half hour it jumped around so much that I wished I could have paused the movie and clarify that I still understood what was going on. I truly enjoy movies that make you think, but this one was a little too confusing at points.

Anyway, then the first half hour passes, and the time traveling settles down to an extent that it’s a little easier to follow. It starts following a chronological time order fairly well, but never quite did it for me.

The movie, just in case you don’t know, is about Henry, who (is never explained) begins to time travel after a stressful car accident, and then sees his mother’s death. Future Henry goes to child Henry, standing on the side of the highway, and tells him that he just time traveled and that it’s all going to be okay. Then it skips back ahead in time to adult Henry and stays there (I was halfway expecting to see Henry as a kid some more).

He then meets with Claire in the library where he works and she immediately goes gaga over him, and he has no idea who she is. She then explains that he’s been coming to her as a child when he’s older and he has become her best friend.

They then enter a (rather quick) relationship and the movie takes off from there, showing Henry go back in time and see his mother before she died, seeing Henry talking to child Claire in a meadow, meeting with his best friend before they become best friends, etc.

The editing wasn’t half bad, they made some scenes flow quite well, but other times (especially the time traveling scenes) they confused me because they didn’t explain it well enough. The effects weren’t too bad. It actually looked like he faded away when he time travels, but he sees a large buck at one point that looked fairly fake to me. It was short at an hour and a half too, which was a plus for me.

The plot was…well, I was never entirely sure where they wanted to take the plot. At some points you started to grasp the point they were getting, just to do a flip and go the other direction and confuse you some more. There was really no conflict of the movie, other than Claire being frustrated that she always had to wait around for him, and Henry to always try to find a new set of clothes (when he time travels, he loses all his clothes).

Overall, it was just so-so, not a bad date movie, but not a great movie either. I would give it 5 out of 10.

Last note, next time on my Julie and Julia review, I’m going to try to set up a poll so that you, the reader, can decide what I will review next.