Directed by Robert Schwentke
(PG-13)
**
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A woman must deal with her husband’s time-traveling ways.
This adaptation of Audrey Niffenegger’s hugely popular book is less a film than a “high-school stage version,” said Tasha Robinson in The Onion. “Kind of sweet, but endlessly clumsy,” Robert Schwentke’s film never fully captures the novel’s symbolism and romantic splendor. As genetic anomaly Henry (Eric Bana) inadvertently slips through time, he and the love of his life (Rachel McAdams) spend their lives “struggling to bridge the emotional gaps” caused by his erratic comings and goings. Though The Time Traveler’s Wife is a love story, “there’s no daring in it, no go-for-broke passion,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.com. Despite their best efforts, Bana and McAdams seem “not just lost in time but in space.” Part romance, part sci-fi, and all cliché, the film never establishes a distinctive tone and ends up as nothing more than a “particularly inept piece of slick hokum.” Actually, Schwentke does balance the sop with just enough “aching solidarity” with the characters to make you care, said Richard Corliss in Time. It’s all a bunch of hooey, but audiences presumably know that going in.
