Since there’s no security check when he travels through time, why do Henry’s clothes vanish just as he does, and why does he arrive starkers, often in the middle of a Chicago winter? Well, I don’t know, and neither does Eric Bana, who portrays Henry in "The Time Traveler’s Wife," a slight little love story that opens here today.
But regardless of where Henry goes, or what he does, or how long he stays, he obviously finds time and space to tone his pecs and abs, because he certainly looks good.
The first time we see Henry, we really don’t see him, because he’s hiding behind some bushes and asking a six-year-old girl to lend him a blanket, then disappearing in another direction. Brooklynn Proulx, as the young Clare, is making a career out of being involved with tragic heroes – she was Mary James, daughter of Jesse (Brad Pitt), in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," and the daughter of Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) in "Brokeback Mountain".
She is so stricken by this unseen man that after she grows up, and turns into Rachel McAdams, she falls in love with Henry before she even meets him, then lives with him, marries him and remains in love and married even as he flits away at odd times and returns at even odder ones, always a few years older, or younger, than when he went away. The age difference between them never seems to matter, and is never discussed in the audience’s hearing. Their wedding day sequence is a delight, as is a scene with a lottery ticket, but too much of the film is not. This is partly due to the fact that the jumping around in time is confusing, although only one of Henry’s friends, Gomez (a lovely portrayal by Ron Livingston), ever seems to notice that something odd is going on.
And one day, about two-thirds of the way into the movie, Hailey McCann, the daughter of Henry and Clare, makes a casual remark and all the tension leaves the movie like the air from a punctured balloon. From there on it’s a question of waiting for the end and making sure the handkerchief is large enough.
Both Bana and McAdams are satisfactory, and Bana covers his New Zealand accent very well. Arliss Howard is charmingly banal as Bana’s father. Director Robert Schwenke does well in making Toronto look like Chicago, though there are good cover shots, showing off enough Chicago sites to make it fairly easy. Bruce Joel Rubin wrote the screenplay from Audrey Niffenegger’s novel, but oddly, I kept feeling an aura of Banjamin Button along the way.
Opens today at multiple locations.
-Joe
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