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Only if you don’t mind being taken for a ride

Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams in ‘The Time Traveler’s Wife’

The Time Traveler’s Wife (English)

Cast: Eric Bana, Rachel McAdams

Director: Robert Schwentke

Sometimes a film’s core idea becomes its strength as well as its weakness.

And when the idea is as fantastic as time travel, it is very difficult to get the thread of coherence going through the length of the film.

Director Robert Schwentke tries hard to maintain this balance as his protagonist Henry (Eric Bana) hops through time.

Based on the bestseller by Audrey Niffenegger, Henry has this strange genetic aberration that makes him travel in time.

But there is nothing he can do to alter fate. He meets his long-deceased mother but can’t stop the accident she eventually met with.

He meets his future girlfriend Claire but can’t tell her that she is going to be his wife. And when she does, he helplessly watches his progeny doing a time travel from her womb leading to miscarriages. It is genetic after all.

A sad fantasy is a new thing and we take time to get used to it… the problem is how to feel sad for a something that is not expected to ever happen to us. Claire keeps waiting as her husband goes on ‘unscheduled’ trips. At times she is left with his clothes in the midst of conversation. The underlining import of communication gap does strike a chord but the screenplay unfolds at a tepid pace and finding Eric without clothes often is soon reduced to a gimmick to make the audience marvel at his chiselled body.

However, Eric and Rachel share a warm intimacy that keeps us away from the impending potholes in the script.

If you don’t mind being taken for a ride, this is for you.

ANUJ KUMAR

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