erose001 Review of The Time Traveler's Wife

The Time Traveler's Wife (2009)

Lacks the emotional and scientific wallop of the novel

[6/10 · 10 February 2010]

As a stand-alone creature, *The Time Traveler's Wife* is a nice love story about a nice couple struggling with an unusual difficulty. The actors do a fine job with the material they were given, but unfortunately, what they were given was a pale shadow of the original tale. The original tale was fleshed out with much stronger plot points, subtexts and symbolism, with supporting characters who had a real role to play in the progression of the plot. Several of these have been jettisoned completely, others are there for reasons that really make no sense other than to be "couple friends." (For example, the character crucial to the ending in the book is only alluded to and not in the context of the ending.) The whole reason for the ending was completely glossed over (to say more gives away an important novel plot point), the intensity of the struggles the couple faces are barely evident, and their motivations (driven by some of those very same supporting characters) are unclear. Obviously one can only fit so much of such a dense work into a two-hour feature, but there are other ways this could be done without making the story a superficial shadow of its former self. Hour-long TV dramas do a better job of providing this kind of writing, characterization, and directing (even those that are not serialized). Furthermore, while the novel gives us a range of characters with whom to identify in a very complex and surreal conceit, the movie only gives us the central two characters, which means if you don't identify with them, you're not going to enjoy the movie. On the other hand, if you do, and if you haven't read the novel, you may enjoy the story as a superficial love story with a clichéd ending. Novel lovers, beware, a key scene, the one that ties everything together at the end of the story, is completely missing, and that was, to me, the greatest loss, as it actually went to the heart of the love story itself.