The Time Traveler's Wife

I couldn’t see this movie on opening weekend, because I ended up seeing District 9. I really didn’t like that one. I mean, the special effects were great, sure, and I understood the message the director meant to convey. However, I had understood it by watching the preview, and I really didn’t need to have it hammered into my head with two hours of torture to get it.

Anyway, my fear about The Time Traveler’s Wife, originally, was that based on the preview, it looked like they had taken an awesome book and turned it into a chick flick. You see, even though there was romance in the book, there was much more to it than that; it certainly was not geared toward women exclusively. So the preview made it look a bit like the story had been butchered. BUT, it turns out I needn’t have been worried. I think that the preview was cut in such a way as to lure in a female audience, who could have been scared off by a sci-fi premise. It turns out that the movie was actually quite faithful to the book (with the few inevitable changes inherent to any adaptation). The only downside to this is that it might be a bit harder to follow for those who have not read the book, but I felt that there were enough explanations in the opening scenes to get the premise across to the audience.

For those of you who are not familiar with the book: The story is about Henry and Clare. Henry is a Chicago librarian with a genetic disorder that causes him to spontaneously, uncontrollably, time travel. So one minute he’s there, the next minute his clothes are in a pile on the floor and he’s stuck naked in some other place and time. He ends up travelling back in time and meeting his wife, Clare, when she is just a little girl, thereby creating a situation where she has known him for years already when he meets her for the first time. They pursue a relationship, with all that a time-travelling husband entails. It is truly a beautiful story, which you should see for yourselves (I don’t want to spoil it with too many details).

This was a fantastic movie, and I look forward to buying this on DVD (which is a big deal, because I can’t remember the last time I bought a DVD for myself).