Adapted from the best-selling novel by Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife tells the tale of Clare (Rachel McAdams) and her love for Henry (Eric Bana). Their relationship has just one major problem: Henry's genetic abnormality, which causes him to travel through time.
Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: Eric Bana keeps landing naked from another time zone; daughter Brooklynn Proulx (inheriting the gadabout gene) keeps meeting herself; wife Rachel McAdams keeps wondering how to time the turkey. I timed it at 107 minutes. Bruce Joel Rubin, Oscar-winning screenwriter of Ghost, is evidently obsessed with dimensional travel, but this trip is made without freshness of vision or fun and funkiness in the execution. (Verdict: two stars out of five)
David Fear, Time Out New York: That the actors can pull off such Oprah-friendly, sci-fi–inflected sap and keep straight faces is the most fantastic thing about this loopy love story. Granted, they're in familiar territory… and neither seems genetically capable of giving a dull performance. But they're only human, and mere mortals can't salvage a Möbius strip–tease that's overdependent on keeping you slack-jawed by its cleverness. Your tolerance for Hallmark-card sentimentality, meanwhile, will have been tapped dry long before the clock runs out. (Verdict: two stars out of five)
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Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian: Of course, like every time-travel story I have ever known, from HG Wells's The Time Machine to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, the time travel plot doesn't make sense… Does the time travel work as a metaphor for our memories of the past and expectations of the future? Well… sort of. But profound meditations on time are not the point. Proust it ain't. It's more about romantic musing on whether we are always destined to meet The One, and there are some unintentional revelations about whether meeting The One is like travelling back in time to Daddy's warm and comforting embrace. (Verdict: two stars out of five)
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