Time Travel Movie Fest: About Time

2013 romantic comedy (with time travel)

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A guy who's had no luck with love finds out from his father that the males in his family are capable of time travel. There are rules and all, but it's still a pretty sweet deal. Rather than use his new gift for financial gain, he decides to try to use it to find love.

Look! This movie was directed by a Hobbit:

Hobbit

He's Richard Curtis (who's directed only this, Love Actually, and the underrated Pirate Radio), and I almost avoided his movie because I thought the poster was terrible and don't usually like romantic comedies that much. "From the creators of Love Actually" didn't quite sell this to me like it would most people. Luckily, because of this Time Travel Movie Fest, I gave it a shot, and it's easily the best of the time travel movies I've seen thus far. I laughed; I cried; I thought about masturbating. That's the trifecta. 

Hot damn! I loved this movie! 

Tim, the main character played by Domhnall Gleeson, has an Amelie poster in his room, and with the playfulness of About Time, I think it's appropriate. They have a similar airiness and feel, the kind of movie that sort of washes over you like mist from a waterfall. Fans of Amelie might watch this and wonder what the hell I'm talking about, but I thought this was a less stylish Amelie with all the French sucked out of it. It at least filled me with warmth like Jean-Pierre Jeunet's work. The characters are utterly charming and quirky. I can understand somebody disliking these characters if they're anglophobic or something, but other than that, I can't imagine somebody watching this and disliking any of the characters. Well, maybe the baby. Richard Cordery plays an uncle, completely oblivious to everything that is going on, hilariously. There's Harry the playwright (Tom Hollander) who is humorously misanthropic. I'm not sure that guy had a line in this movie that I didn't think was funny, a lot of it because of that dry British wit and a lot because of Hollander's delivery. Calling somebody a "sarcastic cow," asking Tim if his mother still looks like Andy Warhol, answering the door with a hearty "What the fuck do you want?", telling Tim that he can have sex with his daughter if he wants because "apparently everybody else does." On paper, he's too bitter and sardonic to like, but I wanted to hang with the dude. Well, maybe on the other side of the room. His best line might be after the debut of a play when he claims, "It's the Titanic of play openings, but with no survivors. No women, no children. Not even Kate Winslet. All dead." 

But you'd probably have to be there. 

Bill Nighy plays Tim's dad. You know those tears and laughs I mentioned earlier? A lot of them come from what Nighy does with this character. The guy is just so likable. And what's he use his time travel abilities for? "Books, books, books." You have to respect a guy who uses time travel just to make sure he has a chance to read everything. 

Sidebar: The "rules" in this movie are that you can only travel to a time when you existed. You can relive moments, and you can butterfly-effect the heck out of everything. So what would you use time travel for? Erase mistakes? Find love? Make some money? Read books? I think I'd use it to watch more movies. 

Back to the father. This movie is a romantic comedy, but there's also a touching father/son relationship, too. In fact, there's a moment in this movie where the focus seems to shift to that relationship instead of the romantic one. And the moments they share and the words they share and sometimes the lack of words they share, though existing in this kind of quirky movie world and admittedly manipulative, are just so touching. Nighy's character is the dad you might wish you had even if you really enjoy your own dad. And he's great at table tennis (without the ball) and knows his music, calling Jimmy Fontana's Il Mondo the "greatest album ever recorded by an Italian who looks like he has a dead badger on his head." 

Of course, you don't watch a romantic comedy for father/son relationships. I often have trouble buying movie love. Watching the initials meetings between Gleeson's Tim and Rachel McAdams Mary, their blossoming romance, and all the other stuff that happens is just about the most beautiful relationship I've seen in a movie. It really is. The dad tells Tim earlier in the movie that "all the time travel in the world can't make somebody love you," but that's kind of close to what Tim attempts to do. Tim and Mary's first scene is wonderful, a love-at-first-sight moment that doesn't involve time travel at all. And it actually doesn't involve sight. It's a brave scene taking place in a completely-dark restaurant with blind waiters. For several moments, you've just got a dark screen and you hear their voices. And when you do get to see Rachel McAdams for the first time when Tim gets his first glimpse of her? Well, I can't speak for every man, but I know I fell in love with her at the exact same time he did. This performance alone made me decide that I need to add Woody Allen's time travel movie to the docket even though I've already seen it just because she's in it. I loved her, and I loved this relationship. 

This movie could have gone various directions. There's a moment when I thought Tim was dicking around a little too much, and I thought I knew exactly where things were going. And I was pissed. And then it doesn't go there at all. Then, you figure it's about to go somewhere else, but it doesn't go there either. This movie, unlike any movie I've ever seen, just seems to go exactly where it needs to go. And I'm not going to just ignore the manipulative aspects and tell you that it's all perfect, but I'm not going to talk about them either. So I guess I am going to ignore them. God, I loved these two, and I think I loved this movie just a little more because it refused to go there or there or there. 

The music's pretty good in this, too, including an overly-sentimental use of a Nick Cave song. The Cure's used in a montage at one point, but a lot of the music turns out to be provided by buskers which was kind of cute. I don't know who Paul Buchanan is, but I loved this song "Mid-Air" that was in this somewhere. I don't even know if I liked the song, but I liked how well it fit in this. 

Ok, I've probably gushed enough. This is the type of movie that just nails life. I don't want to spoil anything, but there are all these little moments that just hit you in the gut, make you reevaluate the way you go about your business, the way you love, the way you experience, and the way you see things. The time travel's there, but people allergic to science fiction should not be worried about it. It's there not to be realistic or bend our minds but to teach us about life and love, and it does it wonderfully. Highly recommended.