About Time (Richard Curtis)

cloud493

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2PUMA6nFWk

At the age of 21, Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) discovers he can travel in time. The night after another unsatisfactory New Year party, Tim's father (Bill Nighy) tells his son that the men in his family have always had the ability to travel through time. Tim cannot change history, but he can change what happens and has happened in his own life—so he decides to make his world a better place by getting a girlfriend. When he accidentally erases the timeline, he must try and win her over again.

I saw it yesterday, loved it to bits

DrumSteve

Yeah twas decent though a bit different than the posters/trailers made out.

Nervous Wreck

Fantastic film, erroneously advertised as a by the numbers romcom. Thoroughly enjoyable!

Essien

I feel like a wuss for liking this as much as I did!

johnnysmack

I found this to be a terrible film. After half an hour they had exhausted the time travel aspect of it and by mid point nearly all the plot points had been taken care of leaving the second half incredibly boring. Even though it had the potnenial to be quite funny there was very few laughs in it.

Also one of the rules was he couldn't go forward in time yet when he took his sister back in time he was able to go forward again AND without the kids being changed which they had made a big point out of leaving his big emotional decision of having to choose between never seeing his dad again or a third kid completely stupid.

Avoid like the plague!

chucksandstorm

Yeah the second half was awful.

Maire2009

Normally not my kind of film cos I'm not a "woman's woman" ha ha but I enjoyed it and thought it was "nice." Maybe cos I was on my period or something ... hormones acting up.

IvaBigWun

Time travel rules and plot holes be damned. Sure hasnt even the glorious Back To The Future trilogy got plenty of them? Richard Curtis has a knack for making or writing heartfelt films like this with usually good to great results and this is no exception.

It might have been how tired I was watching this last night but there were some man tears at the end and a film hasnt done that to me since Once.

The inclusion of this song was one of the many musical highlights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnHoqHscTKE

Its not without its faults, the subplot of the unstable sister is something we've seen in the Curtis canon before and it doesnt quite work, but overall its the best Rom Com Ive seen in a long time. Recommended

Sad Professor

Back to the Future generally abides by its own rules and internal logic, even if some of those rules don’t make a lick of sense. It doesn’t throw them to the wind because it wants have a sweet little scene of characters running on the beach or something, as unfortunately Curtis does not once but several times in this film. It doesn’t help that the rules are never properly explained in the first place. The Time Traveler’s Wife did a far better job of blending romance with sci-fi. Its time travel mechanics were pretty much perfectly executed and made more sense than 90 percent of supposedly serious sci-fi fare. Curtis’s film is just plain lazy in comparison.

All that said, it’s still a very sincere and enjoyable film with fine performances. I could watch McAdams in just about anything and she’s especially adorable here. My biggest gripe wasn’t the terrible time travel plot but the cloying celebration of upper-middle class family values (par for course with Curtis I realise) that threatens to derail the film in its final act. I liked the Groundhog Day-esque message, but I wish it wasn’t so spelled out and in your face, especially when none of the characters in this film have anything to be sad or miserable about.

DrumSteve

Sad Professor wrote: »

Back to the Future generally abides by its own rules and internal logic, even if some of those rules don’t make a lick of sense. It doesn’t throw them to the wind because it wants have a sweet little scene of characters running on the beach or something, as unfortunately Curtis does not once but several times in this film. It doesn’t help that the rules are never properly explained in the first place. The Time Traveler’s Wife did a far better job of blending romance with sci-fi. Its time travel mechanics were pretty much perfectly executed and made more sense than 90 percent of supposedly serious sci-fi fare. Curtis’s film is just plain lazy in comparison.

All that said, it’s still a very sincere and enjoyable film with fine performances. I could watch McAdams in just about anything and she’s especially adorable here. My biggest gripe wasn’t the terrible time travel plot but the cloying celebration of upper-middle class family values (par for course with Curtis I realise) that threatens to derail the film in its final act. I liked the Groundhog Day-esque message, but I wish it wasn’t so spelled out and in your face, especially when none of the characters in this film have anything to be sad or miserable about.

Well apart from

the vicious cancer working it's way through Bill Nighy.

Sad Professor

Yeah but otherwise their lives were pretty good, despite the reckless abandon in which he messed with the past. I was hoping the film would go darker, showing the consequence of his actions. What if he totally f**ked everything up and was unable to repair the damage. The sister’s problems were resolved far too easily without time travel. The film failed to properly explore its own premise.

DrumSteve

Sad Professor wrote: »

Yeah but otherwise their lives were pretty good, despite the reckless abandon in which he messed with the past. I was hoping the film would go darker, showing the consequence of his actions. What if he totally f**ked everything up and was unable to repair the damage. The sister’s problems were resolved far too easily without time travel. The film failed to properly explore its own premise.

The problem being that if they do properly explore that, it's not going to be a gentle english romantic comedy. It's going to be Primer set on the south coast of England.

Hell, it's more of a story about the father and son than it is about about him and his wife.

Sleepy

Sad Professor wrote: »

The Time Traveler’s Wife did a far better job of blending romance with sci-fi. Its time travel mechanics were pretty much perfectly executed and made more sense than 90 percent of supposedly serious sci-fi fare. Curtis’s film is just plain lazy in comparison.

I find it odd that you compare this unfavourably to The Time Traveler's Wife tbh. Maybe it's because I read the novel of that years before they made the movie but I felt like this was actually far more on a par with the emotional impact of Niffenegger's novel whereas the Robert Schwentke adaptation utterly missed the mark...

Sure there were some of the usual time travel inconsistencies (though as a Doctor Who fan perhaps I'm somewhat immunised from those at this stage) and the sup-plot about the sister's problems was shallow as a puddle but this was all about the performances from Gleeson and Nighy imo.

It's certainly a celebration of upper-middle class British life but, then again, what's wrong with that? I think many of us would quite envy the lifestyle portrayed here and, tbh, I find it more palatable than yet another depressing look at life as a member of the working or underclasses where being poor somehow makes one more "real" and morally superior than those they perceive to be their "betters"...

In a family with such a gift in the male line, it'd be a bit inconsistent if the family weren't very comfortable financially because, lets face it, the first thing most of us would do with that gift would be to go back to last week and buy a lotto ticket... It even addresses this fact, albeit with a fairly off-handed remark from Nighy's character concerning his own father.

As an exploration of time-travel this movie doesn't work but then again, that's not really it's ambition. As an exploration of the familial and romantic relationships of a socially awkward, upper middle class young English man it works brilliantly imo. Gleeson is wonderful in it, McAdams is cute as a button and Nighy is the father we all long to be to our sons. Cracking sound-track too!

Sad Professor

All perfectly valid points. I probably came across as overly critical of the film. I enjoyed it very much. But I do think the ending was a cheat. Curtis established a rule, based the whole third act around it and then broke it in final scene.

krudler

Sleepy wrote: »

It's certainly a celebration of upper-middle class British life but, then again, what's wrong with that? I think many of us would quite envy the lifestyle portrayed here and, tbh, I find it more palatable than yet another depressing look at life as a member of the working or underclasses where being poor somehow makes one more "real" and morally superior than those they perceive to be their "betters"...

It's most definitely in the Richard Curtis vision of England where everyone is in some sort of delightfully oddball family alright, I enjoyed it though, the time travel stuff makes zero sense but it's not really about that.