The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

2009's The Time Traveler's Wife stars Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams alongside eachother in this love story.  Ron Livingston was the co-star in this unique concept film about a man with a gene that makes him a time-traveler and the complications it creates with his everyday life and family.


Here we have another actor that I think is greatly undervalued.  Eric Bana has an amazing ability to play vastly different characters in the movies he is in, and bring something unique and different to each and every one of them.  The Time Traveler's Wife is no exception, well acted all around by Bana.  Rachel McAdams was good as usual, but I don't think I have ever seen her in an exemplary performance.  I was a bit disappointed with Ron Livingston however.  Most of the film he was good, but there were parts where I felt as if I were just watching Peter Gibbons from Office Space with a different name and 10 years later.

The uniqueness of the film is what gives it the greatest advantage.  Yes, there are other movies out there about time travel, but this film had some different twists.  I liked the fact that no matter what Eric's character did he was not able to change the past, not to mention he travels just with the power of his mind.  The script was very solid with a lot happening in the film, and I did not see any major holes to the plot.

I did feel that there was a bit of ambiguity in the explanation of how and why the time travel happened.  We heard things such as alcohol and television triggered the travels, but not much further was ever explained.  I did feel however that an excellent job was done keeping all the stories in sync between all the different travels forward and backward.  Character development between Bana and McAdams was well done, especially since you saw it unfold on multiple different levels spanning a huge segment of time.

The ending of the film is very powerful.  Not to compare film to film here, but the ending reminded me of the power in the film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.  Neither of these films will I probably ever watch again, even though I enjoyed them both.  I do not like submitting myself voluntarily to watch a film that I know is happy, yet very depressing in the end.

Capturing this amount of powerful emotion, paired with decent acting and a very solid script, I am giving The Time Traveler's Wife a 4 star rating.  If you haven't seen it yet, it is worth the watch.  Check it out and let me know what you think!  Ciao for now, and see you for the next review.