Susan Granger’s review of “The Time Traveler’s Wife” (Warner Bros.)
Some books translate well to the screen. Others don’t. This falls in the latter category.
Tracing its fantasy antecedents back to supernatural romances like “Somewhere in Time,” “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “Ghost,” “Kate and Leopold,” “The Lake House,” even “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” it focuses on the love affair between elusive librarian Henry DeTamble (Erica Bana) and artist Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams). Clare first meets Henry in her garden when she is only six years-old. He’s a grown man – stark naked, hiding in the shrubbery – and she’s a child who comes to adore him. Over the years, he randomly visits her often and always naked, so she stashes some of her father’s old clothes in the bushes for him to wear. Bizarre? Yes. Believable? No.
When they’re both in their twenties, they meet again in Chicago’s Newberry Library. Eventually, Henry explains how, when he was a child, he discovered after a fiery car crash in which his opera-star mother (Michelle Nolden) died that he has a genetic “chrono-impairment” condition that catapults him involuntarily backwards and forwards in time, incidentally losing all of his clothing en route. The anomaly gets worse when he’s stressed. And who wouldn’t be stressed, continually feeling compelled to disappear and appear again in chronological confusion in the nude? Along with his attire, his money also evaporates, compelling Henry to shoplift and steal.
Considering its enduring popularity, Audrey Niffenegger’s 2004 novel must have transcended the illogical, inconsistent strictures that bind Bruce Joel Rubin’s melodramatic adaptation firmly to the realm of confusing mediocrity. Buffed-up Eric Bana, who almost stole “Funny People” out from under Adam Sandler (even though he only appeared in the final quarter of the film), and luminous Rachel McAdams (“The Notebook”) generate zero chemistry. Heavy-handedly directed by Robert Schwentke (“Flightplan”), it’s almost as if they were occupying different timelines even when they appear in the same scene together.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Time Traveler’s Wife” is a frustrating 4, a creepy, convoluted chick-flick.
