About Time is a romantic comedy that
poses the question, “Could you find love if you had unlimited do-overs?” Here’s the setup: Domhnall Gleeson is an
insecure young Briton who learns that he has the ability to travel backward in
his own timeline and relive any moment. Say the wrong thing at a dinner party? No problem. Go back and try again. Twist your knee skiing? No problem. Go back and take a
different rout next time. And away we go.
It’s a fine setup for a
romantic comedy. As with any endeavor,
however, it’s all in the execution. And it’s in the execution thatAbout Time stumbles in two key areas: it fails to give us a reason to fall in love with its leading
romantic couple, and it actually focuses on the wrong couple
Let me explain: for a romantic comedy to work, the audience must
fall in love with the couple at its center. That’s a tall order – it can’t be easy to craft characters who
appeal to (potentially) millions of people. Still, About Time doesn’t give us much to
fall in love with. The protagonist (Gleeson)
isn’t a particularly interesting figure. He has interesting parents, an interesting sister, and an
interesting roommate, but he’s just … some guy. A well-meaning guy, sure, but there isn’t
anything about him that particularly captures the imagination. The object of Gleeson’s affections, played
by Rachel McAdams, is little more than an object. The film doesn’t work to give me the sense that
she’s anything greater than your Mk 1, Mod 0 Dream Girl. She spends the film being manipulated by a
Gleeson character with the ability to manage their every moment. She has no agency of her own, and the film
expects me, as the viewer experiencing the film through the eyes of the male protagonist,
to fall in love with her simply because she looks like Rachel McAdams and she
seems nice. Buddy, that’s not going to do it.
Gleeson’s parents, however
– that’s a different story. The couple, Bill Nighy & Lindsay Duncan, are delightful. Yes, Nighy also has the ability to travel
backward in his timeline and get the little things right, but one gets the
sense that he does so more to savor his time with his family than say and do
the right things to keep his wife happy. Lindsay Duncan, for her part, is a mature, together woman who
knows how to make things happen. These are interesting people, played by fine actors, and I wanted
to spend more time with them.
Alas. We don’t always get what we want. Perhaps someone can give About Time a do-over.
