The Time Traveler's Wife Reviewed

http://blogs.current.com/movies/2009/08/14/the-time-travelers-wife-re...

I know The Time Traveler’s Wife the new Rachel McAdams/Eric Bana romance with the perfectly explanatory title, is adapted from the best-selling 2003 novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger.

I also know (only because Brett told me yesterday) that the original book is a fairly respectable time travel love story.

I’m glad I know that – because based on the movie I saw, I’d have thought it was more of a group effort concocted in the common room of a sorority house after a few of the sisters had gotten those first, dangerous tastes of feminist literary theory and that the origins of this bad, bad, terrible film, went something…like….

“… I mean, like, we always read all these books where the man is the hero and he like, travels through time! But, like, what about his wife?!”

“She probably sits around waiting for him, who’d wanna read about that?”

“See? You’re like totally devaluing the female experience! We should write a movie about, like, what she goes through, ya know?”

“Oooh, yeah, Courtney, I bet you could tell us what it feels like when guys show up and then leave when ever they want!”

“Shut up!”

“Everybody shut up! So what’s the plot?”

Silence.

“Maybe we don’t need a plot.”

“Yeah, plot is like…. a straight line, like a weiner.”

“Yeah, girls think more like circles.”

“Ohmigod, can it totally star Rachel McAdams?”

“Yes! And then who’s the Time Traveler?”

“Brad Pitt!”

“No! Brad hit the wall”

“Oooh, how about that other guy from Troy?”

“There was another guy in Troy?”

“Yeah, Eric Bana!”

“Was he in anything else?”

Silence.

“Oh, he’s that guy from that Drew Barrymore movie about the gambler, the one with the beady eyes?”

“But his body’s hot.”

“So every time he time travels, he has to be naked.”

“Holla!”

“So….there has to be a wedding, right?”

“And then, like, he almost misses it cause he’s not there.”

“Wait, why would he not want to be there for his wedding?”

Thinking.

“Okay, maybe he can’t control when he comes and goes, so it’s not his fault.”

“Yeah, Courtney, it’s never their fault.”

“Shut up!”

“Maybe he’s like an epileptic but instead of having seizures, he time travels.”

“Guys, my sister’s best friend has epilepsy.”

“That’s sad. And we have to have a scene where they jump up and down on a bed!”

“….and one where a little girl sticks out her tongue and tastes snow!”

“….and where they keep getting back together and it’s amazing and I cried, like in “The Notebook””

“Okay, okay! So Jessica, you’re our secretary, you better have been taking notes or else you’ll have to empty all the trash during Period Week.”

“I got it. Here’s what we have: No plot. Rachel McAdams. Eric Bana. Naked. Time Epilepsy. Wedding. Girl with snow on her tongue. Lots of getting back together.”

“Are you sure we don’t need to know, anything about them…. Or how the time traveling works?”

“Boring! This is gonna be the first movie that is just only the stuff that we like.”

“Yay! Jeez, all this brainstorming is making me hungry….”

“Well, just tough it out.”


-Ellen Fox