About Time was a movie I watched for the first time a year after its 2013 release date. Despite relatively high Rotten Tomatoes scores (70% critics, 81% audience), I recall being unimpressed by it. Many accounts I follow on TikTok are of people giving film reviews. While most, if not all, of those I follow in this niche are younger than me, I generally agree with their assessments (hence my reason for following them). So often, About Time is referenced in a video. The film is often called beautiful, poetic, and devastating. Some have gone so far as to call it a gut punch. Those characteristics I seek out in my romantic dramas, so I signed up for the rewatch, thinking I must have missed something. It turns out that I didn’t. My second viewing held my interest better than my first, but it still felt very average. I’m even more uncertain now about what others see in this film that I missed.

Time-travel movies take a lot of work to do correctly. They are even harder to get right when a film transitions back and forth between the past and the present day. Nevertheless, it’s a popular genre and has produced some incredible ones. A great time-travel movie is one you’ll remember for a long time. Some of the best ones I’ve seen are Back to the Future, Interstellar, Groundhog Day, Arrival, Safety Not Guaranteed, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Frequency, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Palm Springs, The Jacket, Midnight in Paris, and Deja Vu. But when time travel movies are bad, they can be dreadful. Examples include Source Code, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Looper, Edge of Tomorrow (I realize I am in the vast minority on this one), Last Night in Soho, Timeline, Freejack, and Back to the Future Part III.

On his 21st birthday, Tim (Domhnall Gleeson – Ex Machina, Brooklyn) learns from his father (Bill Nighy – Living, Hope Gap)that the men in their family can travel back in time to revisit (and potentially alter) moments in their lives. Fair enough. This sounds like the much-beloved Groundhog Day. Unfortunately, this is where many of the similarities end. Groundhog Day is a romantic comedy and doesn’t try to be anything more. Bill Murray’s character repeatedly lives the same day in perpetuity until he can ideally get it with the film’s love interest. Lovely and fun, with some great quips. About Time tries to be more than just something. It’s not even that it tries to be something more, because that assumes director Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Notting Hill) used Groundhog Day as his template.

Tim is a well-to-do Brit who seems to have much going for him, except when it comes to women. His awkwardness in social interactions or romantic situations fumbles it all away. He is smitten when he meets Mary (McAdams), but through his unintentional creepiness (and her boyfriend), he pushes her away. He continually uses his newly discovered power to go back in time to change the outcome. Unfortunately, this is where the film’s continuity hits its first snag. If, as we originally learned, Tim can only go back and relive or change events that he experienced, how can he suddenly revert to the time and place where Mary and her boyfriend meet, allowing Tim to distance the couple before they even have had a chance to start a conversation? That’s a big problem that many will find difficult to suspend their belief.

About Time throws in an additional caveat that you can’t go back after a certain life event occurs. Without giving anything away, as soon as this life event occurs, there’s no way to change past outcomes without it causing a profound, unwelcome change in the future. So when Tim’s sister, Kit Kat, falls upon hard times and finds herself in a truly tragic situation, Tim is forced to choose whether to use his powers to prevent the event from ever occurring, knowing that returning to his present day will forever be changed. This is where I find the most fault with the film. What is Curtis going for? Is About Time a situational romance, or is it more about an undeveloped theme of sibling bonding? Perhaps it’s neither of these, but rather the tenderness between a loving father and a son he is attempting to guide? The lack of clarity divides this film into clunky chunks and almost pushes McAdams’s Mary to the back burner.

There is an underlying message in About Time: we should all live each day as if it were our last. There is no denying that. At the same time, that’s not exactly revolutionary. There are days in our lives that many of us would like to revisit (maybe even over and over) without trying to change anything, but instead to appreciate the good and the evil. This aspect of the movie is sweet. But, of course, more is needed for a full-length feature. Curtis was a bit ambitious with the story he hoped to tell. As a result, About Time had a script that was all over the place, leaving us with characters who, while endearing, felt challenging to relate to.

Plot 5/10
Character Development 6/10
Character Chemistry 7/10
Acting 7/10
Screenplay 5.5/10
Directing  7/10
Cinematography 7.5/10
Sound 6/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 7/10
65%

D+

Movies You Might Like If You Liked This Movie

• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Me Before You
• Meet Joe Black
• The Butterfly Effect
• Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind