Movie Review: About Time

What if you could go back in time.  Would you?

If given the opportunity, I suppose most of us would choose to rewind and relive certain events in our lives over again.  We’d try to fix what we messed up.  Correct mistakes we made.  Take back something we said.

Then again — would our lives actually turn out any better if we could do them over and over until we finally got it right?  What about the lives of those around us?  Wouldn’t their lives be disrupted too and turn out differently?  What if everyone else is perfectly happy with how things turned out the first time around?  Do they get to voice an opinion?  These are a few of the serious questions worth pondering in the new film “About Time.”

Richard Curtis, the writer-director who gave us Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones’s Diary, Notting Hill, and Love Actually has cookie-cluttered yet another warm and fuzzy crowd-pleaser certain to become an international box office draw.  Indeed, Britain’s own stand-in for John Hughes has created a similar trans-Atlantic cross-cultural franchise that’s sanitized for the senses and tastes good, a sort of a coca-cola formula applied to feel-good movies.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this.  Years ago, it was Merchant Ivory films that first established a beachhead with finicky American audiences who don’t usually care much for movie imports.  Curtis’ more contemporary themes take on the same serious subjects as the previous British invaders, most notably love and loss, crowned with a foreseeable happy ending as the cherry on top.  But Curtis also tends to butcher any sense of mystery out of his plots.  Instead, he runs his stories through a sausage grinder with just the right spicy ingredients tossed in for good measure.  A little chuckle here.  A pop song inserted there.  A guest appearance by someone quirky.  And don’t forget to cast at least one American in a leading role, just so audiences watching on this side of the pond won’t think of this as one of those strange foreign films.  Like a cinematic kielbasa, it tastes pretty good when you’re hungry for that sort of thing, but it’s hardly memorable long after its been digested.

About Time is the story of a young man with a unique gift.  He’s inherited the extraordinary ability to travel back in time and do things over again.  Passed on involuntarily from father to son like a wayward gene, this special power allows our hero to go back and correct the mistakes in his life.  As one can imagine, this has some wonderfully insightful consequences and several funny sequences.  But things get a bit more complicated, especially since this also grants him the power to help those around him, who over the course of the film make their own errors of judgment.  In essence, he’s walking around with his hand consistently perched atop the reset button.

Accepting the premise of time travel is easy.  We’re willing to suspend belief.  We don’t fret about how this power happens or why only this boy and the male lineage of his family seem blessed (or rather cursed) with it.  The purpose here is to go along and enjoy the ride.  Fine.

That ride does provide poignant moments.  Played by Domhnall Gleeson, ginger-haired Tim Lake is convincing dashing across the age spectrum, from 21 to about 30.  His primary mission in life is to find true love.  Soon after graduating from college and moving to London from the Cornwall countryside, he accomplishes his goal and meets his love interest, played perfectly by Rachel McAdams (she’s the token American in the cast).  Along the way and throughout the movie, young Tim receives guidance from the father he idolizes, played by the consistently charming British character actor Bill Nighy who seems to have a natural way of stealing every scene in his movies (see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel).

Yet inexplicably, Tim uses his special powers only for things many would consider innocent.  Even mundane.  Like getting the girl and helping out a few friends and relatives in times of crisis.  Instead of using this gift to its full value, instead, he tries his best to live a normal life.  In choosing this path, we’re forced to wonder (at least I was) why he doesn’t watch the next Arsenal-Chelsea football match, learn of the final outcome, and then rewind the tape and make a large bet with Ladbrokes.  Talk about a “can’t lose” proposition.  The opportunities for self-enrichment are unlimited.

Even if Tim opts not to enrich himself, shouldn’t his focus then be on helping others?  Shouldn’t Tim be running around the world stopping gas explosions and car crashes?  I guess not.  He’d rather spend most of his working days in a law office and slave away for a jerk.  Sorry, I just don’t get it.  I’d be out of that boring law office faster than you could say “guilty.”

A few other things in the movie don’t work either.  First, there’s some confusion about exactly how and when the suspension of time happens.  I found various points in the film to be confusing, not that this annoyance particularly matters in a romantic comedy.  I won’t be spending my free time over the next several days making sense of things and trying to connect the dots.  Sometimes it’s best just to nod, smile, and move on.

But that still doesn’t mask some confusing gaps.  Indeed, this strikes me as a film of omission.  This movie was a wasted opportunity.  Assuming we could actually go back in time and redo the most awful moments of our lives, what obligation do we have toward others to do that same for them?  Here’s where the film completely misses it.

Would someone possessing such powers to be obligated to go out in the world and “do good?”  Back to gas explosions and car crashes, wouldn’t being the world’s Pied Piper be loads of fun, erasing the looming devastation of others?  And if so, might doing good deeds over and over again eventually get tiring?  Even boring?  Where’s life’s drama?

Then, there’s an even larger question.  If you go back and save two lives here, might others die somewhere else?  If time is rewound back to yesterday and the lives of two people who died this morning in a horrible car crash are saved, then everyone else’s lives are also played over again.  Wouldn’t that mean a few people who actually escaped bad things from happening and lived through this day the first time might perish in the redux?  Alas, it seems there’s really no magical rewind button that can make so many moving parts turn out perfectly, no matter how many times you try.  If you save someone here, then someone else will not be so lucky in the next go around.

Yes, this is precisely what would happen.  Which brings up all kinds of moral and ethical conflicts.  Enriching yourself and helping those around you would come at a heavy cost, paid by strangers.

About Time is a fun story and a nice ride.  But there’s a much better and deeper movie in there somewhere waiting to get out and deserving to be told.

ABOUT TIME:  WATCH OFFICIAL MOVIE TRAILER HERE