The Time Traveler's Wife

What is it about Chicago that breeds time-leaping tales of romantic schmaltz (see Somewhere in Time, The Lake House)? Is it the architecture? Or the cold winters? Given the scant, implausible reasons given in this latest preposterous weepy about how the hero actually subverts the space-time continuum (a genetic anomaly, huh?), we’ll never really know.

Based on Chicagoan Audrey Niffenegger’s Today show book-club selection, The Time Traveler’s Wife chronicles the ill-fated romance between Henry (Bana), a Newberry librarian who suffers from stress-induced fits of time travel, and Clare (McAdams), the woman he inexplicably courts, even as a young girl. As shown in The Terminator, time travel has its setbacks, among them the fact that you can’t take your clothes with you. For Henry, that presents innumerable hurdles, such as hypothermia in the winter. That may sound serious, but it’s hard to contain a giggle every time a naked Henry remarks, “I’m a time traveler.”

This is probably the fault of both the director and the actors, who are never given more than one or two dimensions: Bana (handsome, confused); McAdams (perky, devoted). There is zero specificity to their relationship—only idyllic clichés. By the time somber concerns such as miscarriages and mortality enter the picture, the two are so far removed from reality that it’s hard to care.

Certainly, the film’s conclusion will choke up more romantically inclined viewers, but the film is weighted down by an unearned mawkishness. For this, we can blame Wife screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, whose sappy Oscar-winning travesty Ghost remains a low point in Academy Awards history. Maybe someday we’ll be able to go back in time and reverse its decision. If we did, would The Time Traveler’s Wife exist today?

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