The Time Traveler's Wife

A ROMANTIC DRAMA ABOUT A CHICAGO LIBRARIAN WITH A GENE THAT CAUSES HIM TO INVOLUNTARILY TIME TRAVEL, AND THE COMPLICATIONS IT CREATES FOR HIS MARRIAGE.

A genuinely old-fashioned Hollywood romance with a science fiction angle, The Time Traveler's Wife stars Eric Bana as Henry DeTamble, a Chicago librarian with a genetic disorder causing him to travel through time involuntarily. The screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (My Life), based on a novel by Audrey Niffenegger, incorporates some of those crazy paradoxes that are a part of time-travel fiction, but without beating one over the head. Take Henry's introduction to his future wife, Clare (Rachel McAdams), who tells him they've already met even though they haven't actually met. Brain teasers, however, are not what The Time Traveler's Wife is about. In a quite haunting way, the story really concerns what it means to know and love someone at every phase of his or her life. The fact that Henry's life, from Clare's perspective, is hardly linear--he can disappear and turn back up again at different ages--means that she must cherish what is essential about him. Which doesn't mean the couple is immune to periods of unhappiness, including a painful sequence about trying to bear a child--perhaps a child that might also carry the time-traveling gene.

While there is nothing particularly exciting stylistically about The Time Traveler's Wife, in many ways it has the simple charms and clear emotions of a 1940s weepie assigned by a studio to one of its journeyman, contract directors. (The film was directed by Flightplan's Robert Schwentke.) A couple of supporting players, Arliss Howard (as Henry's father) and Ron Livingston (as Henry's friend), provide even more reason to recommend this movie as a satisfying experience. --Tom Keogh