Film Review-About Time (2013)

Director: Richard Curtis
Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Rachel McAdams, Bill Nighy

Full disclosure: Romantic comedy is my least favorite film genre. I find many of them to be too predictable and formulaic for my tastes, and I find it hard to believe in a couple falling in love over the course of a two hour movie. It is also hard to impress me with time travel. The rules are just too complicated to be believable. This is exactly the sort of movie I wouldn’t have ever watched if it weren’t for the fact that I got a free ticket to an advanced screening. This is not meant to be a knock against the genre itself. There are romantic comedies I enjoy very much, as you’ll soon see, but something has to rank last.

I was very pleasantly surprised! The writing is incredibly sharp in this movie. They really pack a lot of depth in without becoming convoluted, or at least they keep it to a minimum. It is funny, sweet, and heartfelt. It takes care of all my usual gripes with both rom-coms and time travel. The writers set rules very early to protect themselves from plot holes and, as far as I can see, they stick to them. If time travel is real, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these rules apply. Time travel also turns out to be exactly what makes the romance believable. Because Domhnall Gleeson’s character gets multiple do-overs, he can learn from each of his mistakes until he gets it right.

It’s easy to forget how many accomplished actors are in this movie. Margot Robbie always slips my mind in this one, in her only big role before her huge breakout in Wolf of Wall Street. Everyone is perfectly cast in the film though, from Gleeson as the awkward in love main character, to McAdams (who I love in everything she is in) as the love interest, and Bill Nighy as Gleeson’s father.

The real core of the film, however, is more than romance or time travel. There are things that happen to some of the supporting cast throughout the film that at moments completely throw the family into chaos and make for so much more than your average rom-com. The real message is about living every moment to its fullest and enjoy every single bit of happiness you can get, because no matter how hard you try, you cannot change the inevitable. The real troubles in life will always be the things that never crossed your mind. This is a very timely lesson that I think many of us have learned or been reminded of recently and I think we would do well to remember it always.